


downtown grey matter

by Hazzafagga



Category: One Direction
Genre: Aggression, Alcohol, Androgyny, Anger, Blood, BoyxBoy, Bullying, Cancer, Child Abuse, Confusion, Depression, Football, Incest, M/M, Molestation, Music, Orchestra, Original Characters - Freeform, Original Child Characters, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Original Male Characters - Freeform, PTSD, Pedophilia, Physical Abuse, Rage, Rape, Sexual Abuse, Soccer, Trauma, Underage - Freeform, Verbal Abuse, Violence, composer!harry - Freeform, footie!louis, gay relationship, harry is slow, larry smut, larry stylinson - Freeform, opera - Freeform, self hatred, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 20:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6209287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hazzafagga/pseuds/Hazzafagga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hiding his frustration through the football off-season, Louis faces his problems the way ostriches do. When he's suddenly pushed to confront his childhood traumas, he crawls deeper under the dirt only to find the courage he's been missing. Louis isn't sure where he'll end up on his path to normalcy, especially not with reverse psychology and a laggard trailing behind him, but the arrival is better late than never.</p><p>or one where louis is the angriest person in the world and harry doesn't understand much besides music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. bang

**Author's Note:**

> I got this idea in a dream a few weeks ago where louis was just angry all the time and enjoyed harrys company. i feel like I can do well with this so always positive energy !!!!!! ps I won't apologize for giving any of my characters (1d and original) the traits that I did bc I know there will be people who'll criticize me for it. I don't condone any of the unethical content within context so please don't accuse me of supporting or promoting any of it. yeah and please don't translate, copy or repost without my consent thanks :///// big love
> 
> ps please ignore the mistakes I promise to go back and fix them continuously

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hello house, goodbye home.

Louis stared at the pillow across him. It was wrinkled and stained, originally homely, covered in biscuit crumbs and dirt, marker and paint and other things that shouldn't have begrimed it. That pillow was ruined, though Louis always hated it whether it be returnable or not. He hated that grotesque pink pillow in the shop window in 2007, and he hated it in year 2011 once it wore its first spill of beer. He hated it throughout winter and every subsequent spring, the look of it in cold weather and in warm making it so appalling and disgusting. Louis found it horrific, as if Greek heroes had a brawl over the good spot on the couch and accidentally unleashed their power on the ungodly throw pillow.

However, he wasn't upset at the pillow. Louis was never upset at it - he simply didn't like it. But Louis stared at it regardless through the darkness, glaring at the white Valentine ruffles - a Marie Antoinette dream - sweating as he vexedly heaved. His brows were drawn together, lips pursed and quivering with the sour taste of ire, and he could feel bodily salts pooling in his palms, clammy and hot. The rhythm of the breath his lungs captured, though like poison, sounded so lustful. He breathed in air like he would a lover, fire in his eyes, red in his mouth and perspiration all over him. Although the feeling was far from that or anything remotely sensual, his heart beat for relief; relief in any possible way from the emotion soaking into his fatty stomach lining.

Louis bit his lips, his eyes upon the deep salmon cushion hardly faltering. He watched it the way a cowboy watches another, the way a woman watches her drunken partner, how a father watches his daughter's first boyfriend and proceeds to either turn the other cheek or go with his instincts and punch him in the throat. Though unlike those analogies, he hadn't a real reason to be angry with _a pillow_.

He fisted his shorts in his hands and dropped his head. He was growing tired of the sickening sight of highlighter coral, but his shorts weren't any better. He could find something, if not everything, about any object that triggered bother. And about the shorts: they had a fray.

Louis stood up with his water in one hand, crutch in the other, letting out a long, short of supply, sough. He balanced himself though was slightly leaning to the right, the cuff round his forearm and the grip almost immediately fogged over by his sweat. He gulped down the last of what he could without soon having to use the toilet and went for the door. He reached out for the handle, then glancing back at the pillow, he scoffed.

"Good riddance." Louis dumped his water on the cushion, spilled what was left in the coffee pot, and left the bus.

The grass was freshly cut - the maintenance man mowed down by the concession booths on Mondays - and the air reeked horribly. The arena was empty apart from himself and the staff, his team having gone for showers and then to a late lunch, leaving Louis behind like a damned bug that didn't matter.

Though, of course, Louis mattered. He mattered just as much as anyone else, if not more, his teammates just as skillful as he, if not less, so he deserved a proper goodbye - not a degrading farewell a random tramp off the street would earn just from smelling bad and swallowing sympathy like food. Louis was an honorable man. He respected his elders, said "please" and "thank you", opened doors for both men and women, gave up his train seat to anyone who needed it. He was allowed gratitude where suited.

"See ya next season, Tommo."

Louis looked up from the gravel, seeing Mister Lowe hopping off of the mower, thick work boots tugging him to the ground. Louis nodded in his direction, scowl etched in his flesh subsiding lightly. "Take care."

"My, oh, my." The man _tsk_ ed briefly as he observed Louis' struggled walk to his car. "That's quite a bit of strain you're putting on that sore bit. Ain't you supposed to be in a wheelchair?"

"Needing a wheelchair isn't really something you ask God for twice."

"Who knows? You might find yourself relieved."

"Oh, believe me, I know. But then, you've got the feeling like everybody feels sorry for you, which, really, is the most dehumanising thing that can legally happen nowadays. It should be illegal."

"You're right on that one, brother. Well, pray it heals up."

"We've an ill amount of prayer, sir," Louis explained, keeping on his way, "best not waste them. Have a good one."

The drive home was slow. It felt an awful lot like walking to the pharmacy after school down where Louis grew up, the ghettos too dangerous for a child like him, or even the average blocks with neighbourhood bullies. He'd had his fair hand of misfortunes throughout childhood, and was repeatedly reminded of them on a fair basis of routined travel. Driving to the stadium, packing thirteen hyperactive men with leg reflexes in a fitted bus and conversing with blunt banter no longer filled the daily activity, however. Football season had come to an end, an early end for Louis, and he wouldn't see another impactful football until spring.

Unfortunate was he that his hurt leg was the right leg, and so the difficulty to use the accelerator and brake was rather high. His knee had been dislocated, ankle and second to last toe sprained, and his pride worst of all. It was broken. He felt sore in every aspect, doing any movement whatsoever that involved his lower body. The field doctor did, in fact, suggest a wheelchair into November, though pushing himself round the streets by his arms, a couple of flimsy, flamboyant things primarily used to raise a middle finger, didn't sound so appealing to him. Louis' legs were his foundation - figuratively more than literally - and he could not mope away the will to exercise his only reason of profession.

Louis pulled up at the side of his house. He quickly took the keys from the ignition, eager to pocket them and go inside for a long, well-earned nap, though as he held the keys in his hand, he began to think. He wondered, having been sat still in the car enclosed within his genial and invulnerable neighbourhood, if he had always felt so comfortable. Through the years of little worry and fine pay for doing what he'd always done since primary school, past troubles surely conveyed the potential to fade. After so many years of seeing the bright side of things, he could almost forget what it was like to have real troubles. Though, of course, he never did. The question he asked himself - _Am I lucky?_ \- ran so, decidedly slow in his head.

Perhaps Louis was blessed to have made himself a life broadcasted where most important. Football was always the focal point of Louis' hoped career followed by other dreams that he figured didn't measure up. He drove an expensive car, lived in a large house, kept a content lifestyle unable to fit erratics. And yet, he found himself recollecting his childhood.

Louis gasped, the clutch he had on his keys becoming tight once someone knocked on the window.

It was Missus Wolff with a platter of biscuits. She was in her purple polkadot dress, drastically green heels adorning her feet and making her look a blind 1940s housewife. She'd done her hair up in a tight ponytail, her ghostly face stretched at her forehead with eyebrows raised high and daintily in some surprise. Or maybe it was happiness that had risen her eyebrows, but regardless, it threw a ball of mixed emotions in Louis' direction that missed him by a hair.

Louis stared at her in confusion.  
She tapped the glass again, smiling excitedly to see the man before her.

Louis took a moment. He would be returning to the real world in a matter of seconds. All of the cheering, the traveling, the visiting new stadiums where everyone knew the name _Louis Tomlinson_ would all be gone officially. He would be a normal lad once he exited his car, everything he'd had for months suddenly slipping away.

Louis opened the door eagerly. "Hey, Missus Wolff," he said as he stepped out of his car.

"Hi, Louis!" The woman backed away whilst her neighbour waddled over to the backseat, grabbing his crutch before locking the doors. She looked him up and down, her eyes wide in horror. "Where's your footie uniform?"

"Oh, you know, had to get it washed and that. I'll be ready to wear it again in the springtime."

"Oh, yes! Cam would love to see one of your games next season." She grinned fondly at the thought of her child, then got distracted by her biscuit platter. She mindlessly followed Louis along the path toward his front door, staring at the bright colours and arrangement on the tray. "If I knew you were coming back this afternoon, I would have made more biscuits."

"Oh, no, that's quite fine," Louis assured her, hobbling strategically down the sidewalk. "I'm aching to catch up with all that I've missed, but unfortunately I'm really feeling bad at the moment. I fear I'll bore you with my constant groans of agony." She laughed at that, and Louis smiled. "I just need to get off this leg for a few hours."

"A few hours?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'll save a plate for you then." She watched the young man struggle with the door for a moment, eying his right hand that irritatedly strangled the grip of the crutch, the idea that his leg could be completely damaged flying right past her. But with his struggle, a lightbulb had went off above her head, and she took the keys from Louis and opened the door. "I'll save a plate," she repeated. "When you feel better, you can come over for dinner. I'm making pot roast and a pear pie. It doesn't taste like pears, it tastes like apples."

"Sounds fantastic." Louis yanked his crutch from a snag, an old, rusted nail he was meant to remove months ago, on the doorframe, nearly tripping over the foyer rug.

Relaxing his glare to his knee that unmistakably glared at him back, he raised his head to find Missus Wolff looking at him expectantly, almost brainlessly.

Louis placed his hand on his hip to gather patience. "I'll come by round seven if that isn't too late."

"I'll be happy to have you anytime, Louis," said Missus Wolff, gratitude tugging her rouge lips at the corners. "Let me know if you need anything. If you need someone to wash your footie uniform, I can do that."

"Yeah, defo." Louis nodded and smiled halfheartedly, though tried his hardest to keep in genuine. "Cheers, Missus Wolff. Oh, and, um... say hi to Cam and Andy for me."

"Yeah, okay. See ya later, Louis!" She waved him goodbye for until that _see ya later_ would be gifted at seven and not a minute after.

Louis carefully shut the door, hearing the tapping of the woman's shoes fade as she returned home and checked her mailbox on the way. He watched her through the panel to assure she wouldn't come running back to his door exclaiming she'd forgotten to offer him a biscuit, and once he made it certain, he sighed.

The atmosphere was suddenly noiseless. Louis had a feeling - quite an eerie one - that something was happening behind him. He thought perhaps someone broke in whilst he was away, however it only must have been apprehension. He breathed slowly, his forehead placed upon the glass with an itch creeping about his face and along his skull, and he began moving his head back and forth as if to scratch what he couldn't reach. There was an itch deep inside his head running amok through the walls of his brain. It tickled like a spider on skin.

Louis rolled across the door onto his back to face the foyer, immediately hit by everything he'd left there. Nothing moved, nothing was misplaced. No one must have broken in for all he knew. His primary life was just as he left it, ready to be picked up for use again. He looked at it all - at all of what he'd forgotten for a while - taking in sight of everything that remained untouched by the rest of the world.

Louis wandered the living room, limping across the floor lamely with his crutch that hardly supported him, toward the glass table placed below a group of photos on the wall. Louis put a gaze on them, eyes running over the lot quickly but surely, attention going back and forth into different periods of his time here on earth thus far, going over all that he had accomplished. He took a few moments to remember every place he'd been, all the things he'd seen and people he met. Seeing himself from years ago, from when he was so young he could hardly recall the way that his mother held his hand, made him feel unrelated.

Louis stared blankly at a photo of himself with Rosemary, his blue Angora rabbit, hung just in front of him. He was holding her dear to his chest, a sweet, endearing grin on his face that rid all of his unsettling stomach upset then. Then, however, at that age - twelve he must have been - he couldn't know anything but ease. And at this age - twenty-six nearly - to be at ease was luxury he couldn't afford no matter the plethoras of money in all his pockets.

Somehow a cigarette found its way between his fingers. Despite his frightening impulse to smoke, he took a long, stressed drag, blowing off into the face of his youth.

The two of them abased each other, the elder Louis gradually growing angry as his fist on the crutch became something rather disturbing.

Louis grunted and shook his head. There wasn't anything to do anymore; nothing to waste his time as he thought too much on things he didn't want to think about. Football was no longer in the picture. Until springtime - and it was on its sluggish way - Louis had no idea how to spend his hours alone.

The man's lips fit tightly round his cigarette, fingers nearly pinching the nicotine out of the body as he took it out of his mouth. The taste had turned into one of old habits that weren't his, and so he dabbed it out in the ashtray on the glass table, watch closely trained on himself and the reflection going straight through, still. He took a little step back and raised his hand, fingers closed besides his thumb and pointer that he selfishly jutted the nose of the photo. Louis shut his left eye and aimed between the other's. "Don't move," he said intriguingly soft, unhinging the safety in his head. "I've got you, doll. _Bang_."

Once seven o'clock creeped unto his welcome mat, Louis went down to the Wolffs'. Missus Wolff was first to greet him upon walking through their backdoor that was always open, as he had determined it.

"Hi, love," Louis said smiling, pulling her into a tight embrace. "Food smells awesome."

She pressed her fists to her cheeks, blushing at the common amount of charm that her neighbour had. "Thank you!" the woman chimed once Louis released her. "Cam helped me with everything, but mainly done the cleaning. You know, Cam likes cleaning up after me. But... oh." She looked round the dining room in haste. "Cow patties. I've lost Andy."

"I'm sure he'll turn up."

"Suppose he's out washing the car. Or maybe the dog."

"I think it--"

"Cam!"

"I'm pretty sure I saw them in the Sedan ten minutes ago. Were they going somewhere?"

She clapped her hands together hurriedly. "Yes," she confirmed as though he should have reminded her sooner. "They're getting some whipped cream for the pie. But Tesco is close, so they should be back right now." She began to count down from ten once hearing the recognisable sounds of her poor car engine. Louis watched her diligently speed to the front door, small, quick feet collecting static from the auburn Persian rug. She swung open the door to meet her husband Andy clutching a lot more than a bin of whipped cream to his chest.

Later on after Missus Wolff served all the plates with beef and vegetables along little bowls of onion soup, Louis sat across an empty chair, the spouses on either end, with largely petit Cam beside the him, hushed and bored.

Andy spoke indulgently on about how he'd never missed tuning in to a single one of Louis' games all last summer - that he and Cam looked forward to seeing him on the telly or hearing some good news on the radio.

Andrew Wolff was a nice, soft-spoken man in his late twenties. There was something about him, with the way he looked at you, that gave you feeling that you were important, even if God had made you nothing remotely similar. He would put his chin in his hands and gaze directly at whomever spoke to him, listening earnestly to every word to ooze out the mouth as if he were parched and that voice he heard were the finest water from the falls.

"I noticed that you didn't play the last game," Andy addressed over a second conservative beer. "I didn't want to jump to conclusions, but seeing you now on that bad leg, it's compelling to ask."

"Yeah." Louis laughed through a short sigh before wiping his hands with a napkin. "I, um... It's basically all just fu--" He glanced down at Cam. "It's all pretty bad."

"Hate to hear that. What happened?"

Missus Wolff repeated urgently: "What happened, my dear?"

Missus Wolff - Lacey Darling Wolff - didn't look a day over thirty, however was thirty-five. She had a savory tone, like cold milk in a hot cup of tea, and big pretty eyes that saw straight into you even if she didn't know it. She didn't know a lot of things. She didn't know how to read very well though did the paper crossword every morning, filling the blanks with things like "Moose Neckless", or "Every Good Boy Does Fine". She sometimes put in names she knew if she had a swell morning, figuring a way to write in her family several times or even Louis her neighbour. Regardless of how she filled the puzzle, though the answers were hardly accurate, managed to solve it every day.

"Accident on the field," Louis told the three of them. "I dislocated my knee and sprained a couple things."

The girl jerked in excitement, clasping her almost empty glass of spirits so hard it could have burst. "I bet that's the bit you missed when you were taking Kaylee for a walk, Andy! I knew something happened when you took Kaylee for a walk!"

"I saw it."

They all looked at Cam's brown, freckled face.

"I was getting a Coke from the garage when they said Louis' name on TV. 'He has to be pulled out,' they said, and I was so sad about it I didn't tell dad when he came back."

"Oh, Cam," the woman huffed. "You should have said."

"If you did all that to your leg, why are you walking on it? Even limping the way you are isn't gonna make it better or even keep it from getting worse. You ought to get it casted or something. Shit like that nobody wants to do, but you're gonna be on crutches anyway."

Louis laughed after Andy gestured to to his crutch leaning against the wall. "I dunno. Never been too fond of helplessness."

"You'd be more helpless on a bare broken leg than a casted broken leg."

"Unless I walk on my hands, then a cast would definitely slow me down." Cam laughed quietly at that. "But honestly, I'm getting a cast tomorrow. I was putting it off. You see, the doctor that saw me at the match said it'd be best I use a wheelchair until late fall, but, really, I'd rather be bedridden."

"I remember when I was bedridden." Missus Wolff stood up from her chair, carefully passed Louis as though she might lose her balance and hurt his injury, and took her child's plate. "Remember that, Andy? It was right before Cam was born I twisted my ankle in the Tesco car park. Cam was a big baby, Louis. I gained 18 kilos with that baby because all I wanted to eat was chocolate and Coca-Cola. Sometimes at the same time!

"Anyway, the very next day I went into labour. I was in bed for two weeks because I twisted my ankle and 'cause Cam was a _big baby_."

"4.5 kilos is not big," her husband reprimanded. He turned to the beloved six-year-old, a satisfied grin on his thin lips. "You weren't a big baby, love, you were just chubby. You were beautiful and we loved you anyway, so weight didn't matter."

"That's not what I meant!" She gathered the rest of the dishes, minding her husband's that still had few spoonfuls left. "I love you, Cam. I would carry those 18 kilos on my shoulders for the rest of my life for you. If you wanted to me to eat only chocolate and Coke again for the rest of my life, I'd do it because you're my baby - big or small."

When the night ended and after Louis shook Andy's hand and hugged Missus Wolff goodbye, Cam ran out to the yard before Louis could cross the flowerbeds.

"Mum forgot to give you this," the child huffed, holding up a decorative plastic bag with Louis' jersey number on it.

The lad smiled and took it in his crutch-free hand. "Well, thanks a lot, Darling."

"She feels bad that she didn't ask what happened to your leg earlier. She was so happy to see you she didn't notice."

"It's all right. I wouldn't have asked if I saw me on crutches either."

Cam grinned at his winsome sarcasm, then became serious once again. "Can you babysit me tomorrow? Mum and Dad are going on a date all day and I can't walk Kaylee by myself. You can take me with you to get your cast, and I promise I won't be bad like last time."

"You weren't bad last time. Hell, you behaved a lot better than I did when I used to catch frogs."

"But it was a _toad_."

"A toad. Yeah, it was."

"So," Cam trailed on, "can I sleep over?"

"You know that's a crime punishable by death in some countries?"

"No, no, I asked Mum already."

Louis raised an eyebrow. "You sure?" Cam nodded. "You ain't lying to me, are you? You know where liars go?"

"I don't lie." The angel made the darnedest grown-up eyes, tossing that long black hair over one shoulder in such adult innocence that every bit of life got sucked out of Louis' soul through his pores. And so Louis agreed and ordered his young neighbour home to get a toothbrush.

During the night - round ten or so - the two played a game of checkers, and Louis attempted teaching the little one to play chess, but failed miserably. He managed to teach what all of the pieces were called and show what most of them could do on the board, though it never caught on. Afterward, as Cam began to fall asleep on the kitchen floor with a miniature bin of Ben & Jerry's tucked between the knees, they to brush their teeth. Of course, Louis brushed for Cam and lent the smallest shirt he owned just for the night. And as Louis left the room they shared, clicking off all of the lights besides for the hall and toilet on his way to the kitchen, the house became so still. He put the ice cream in the freezer and the spoons in the sink. He stayed there for a moment.

There was a spot on Cam's spoon; a spot of cherry lip balm. It was pink on glistening metal sat in the bottom of his sink, and the shine of them both was like screaming in his ear to the eye. Louis moved his head sideways and took the spoon, bent it in half at the spine like rubber pencil, and tossed it on his way out for a cigarette.


	2. doleful lump

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> find "louis" when c, the number of cigarettes louis smokes, is 5 and d, tallied points of diabetes, is infinite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is going to be updated kind of slow sorry :// with school and trying to finish other one shots and fics i probably won't have much time to write this one. i really love this plot and i'm not going to give up on it easily. i hope u all start to like it when the story takes off.
> 
> tysm for reading, liking and commenting :)
> 
> ((((ps I'm absolutely terrible at editing my own work so please forgive the horrific abundance of mistakes)))

The next morning Louis woke to barking. At first he ignored it, but barking was one thing among others that was too obvious to ignore; too there.

He flipped over in bed - as successfully as he could with a bad leg - unwillingly listening to the disruptive sounds that Zim made on the TV. The ceiling fan above him, like rotisserie chicken, spun so very slowly, teasing him about the temperature of the room that was still simply room temperature. And he had told his neighbour before tucking-in not to turn on the light upon waking so that Louis could sleep longer, sounder, deliver his very earned rest due weeks ago. Only being a kid, Cam didn't understand that Louis wanted peace and quite until at least nine o'clock with that reasonable request. So the man was unfortunately laying beneath sunrise listening to agitated bickering between alien and human at 7:00 in the morning.

Unable to sleep again, he went down the hall. His back ached from the lousy springs on the guest mattress, so he didn't feel up to putting a shirt on just yet. He came into the living room clad in Snoopy boxers with a limp more stressed than before.

Cam looked up from the telly, but reverted back to the cereal bowl held at the chest once Louis yawned. "Morning," Cam mumbled.

He ignored the kid's dissatisfying greeting whilst taking it upon himself to fix his own cereal. He hobbled over to the couch, skillful with balancing his weight and a bowl, and plopped down. "Ya mum an' da leave yet?" he wondered, a mouthful of Frosties muffling him.

"Uh-uh. I seen the car in the drive a little bit ago."

"Ah." He watched the cartoons for a second. "Have you said goodbye to them?"

Cam said no with a big shake of the head.

"Do you want to?"

"No."

"You know your mum'll go mad if she finds out you don't want to see her before she goes. She'll be gone all day crying over you."

"She's coming back. And I'm watching _Invader Zim_ anyways."

"That's no way to treat your mum, Cam. You know, she looks at you like you drew the Big Dipper and hung the moon."

"What's the 'Bill Dibber'?"

Louis lowered the volume on the television and scratched his face. He looked at Cam who refused to look back. "That's not the point. After this goes off, get dressed, all right?"

"Do I have to?"

"What'd I say?"

Cam looked down defeatedly and repeated, "Get dressed," then stood up reluctantly. "But I still get to go with you to hospital... right?"

Louis made a deal that if all of Cam's spelling schoolwork got finished before the appointment, they would accompany each other at hospital, the downtown park and later, if Cam wasn't too grouchy, perhaps the cinema. Except that was a lot to ask of Louis, for his knee and ankle and his toe just a bit hurt more and more by the hour. It felt as though someone who hated him desperately hammered nails his cartilage, withdrew them quickly and left him alone for a few minutes before grabbing another nail to start the process over.

Cam sat quietly behind the glass on the other side of the room listening to something on a little iPod as Louis lay on the cold X-Ray table, hands folded worriedly over his stomach to keep his insides from tumbling out. He stared up at the fluorescent lights much longer than he should have, waiting to hear something easy and not too unfortunate.

A nurse knocked on the door considerately.

She immediately caught Louis' gullible, unchaste eye.

The troubled lad had slight difficulty closing his mouth once it fell open, though one would notice his teeth clicking as he finally did. He lay his head back on the table and resorted to tapping his good foot.

"Hi, Louis," she said in a soothing voice. "How are you doing?"

The boy nodded and grinned weirdly. "I'm good, thanks."

"That's very good. I'm going to ask you a few questions, okay?"

He nodded again as he stared intently at her chest in times she looked down at her clipboard.

"When did this accident happen?"

"Well, it was... It was three days ago, I think."

"Have you already visited a doctor?"

He looked away when she looked at him. "Um..." he mumbled apprehensively. "I saw a doctor right after it happened, yes. It was brief."

"Football accident?"

Once Louis nodded, did she, too, a simple, youthful smile playing at her naked, freckled lips. She asked him a few other things - what the field doctor informed him and where his leg hurt - before leaving again. When she was gone, Louis rolled his eyes at his obviousness.

Even after he was alone for minutes, Louis still thought about her. He didn't think of her in anyway that would assume he would pursue her nor start a relationship thus far in adulthood. He hadn't managed a single relationship apart from friendship, and perhaps kinship, since he was seventeen and was reluctant to try again. He remembered the nurse's nameplate reading Vasana - something rather strange and only pretty with an accent - and contemplated her. He caught himself wondering as the doctor came to move him to a different room (where Cam followed) why she looked the way she did; she looked nonnative but very familiar; one nationality but then also another. Her dark skin was lovely, as were her eyes and luscious, curly, caramel-brown hair.

Over an hour had gone by - a long, uncomfortable hour of X-Rays and prodding and talking - before Louis unsurely slipped off the table onto both of his feet.

"Now, you don't _have_ to use a wheelchair, but I do recommend another crutch," the doctor explained, handing Louis his crutch along with a brand new left-handed one to match. "It's going to be really hard to get from A to B at first, but I'm sure you can handle it."

"Oh, yeah, definitely." Louis licked his lips as he gazed down at the cast on his leg, suddenly unbendable and practically useless. "Cheers for that."

"Take it easy for the next few days, okay? Walking on that leg all this time has added a bit of damage to the initial incident. The last thing you want is to end a perfectly good career due to something that could have been prevented. I'm surprised you've even made it this long with a fracture as bad as that."

"Well, I've learned to take pain as it comes. Thank you so very much." Louis poorly waddled across the room to Cam as the doctor stepped out. "Ready to go?"

No answer, as the music from the iPod was too loud.

He grabbed one of the headphones and leaned over. "Hello?" Louis whispered.

Cam, who must had been sleeping, grew fretful in the eyes, but put on a sour, vexed face just after looking up. "My neck hurts."

"Want me to punch you in the stomach to ease the pain?"

"No!"

Louis grinned keenly and removed the oversized headphones from those fair, small ears, petting back the fine hair that had fallen from Cam's ponytail. "Stand up," he said, tucking his crutches beneath his arm to take his little friend by the hand. "Don't move your head. I'll crack your neck in the car."

"I don't want you to crack my neck!" Cam whined, reluctant to turn certain ways regardless. "I want you to rub it. But you gotta be soft."

"Would Muhammad Ali box any better if his fights were soft?"

"Huh?"

Louis shook his head.

"I don't know Mamid Ali, but sometimes you gotta be soft or else nobody will like you. My mum is so soft and gentle and Dad loves her to bits, so maybe you should be soft, too. You crack my neck, Louis, I'm never talking to you again."

He couldn't help but scoff. To think that a 6-year-old knew of such things as holding a grudge for valid reason gave Louis some kind of doubt about himself; that he had never known true reason to hold a grudge. He'd keep some pathetic ransom or no ransom at all, most of which were toward his family or family friends, though with some people he knew all too well, never stayed mad at. There was a gleaming, incomplete silence swimming amongst them, and before they were captured in total quietness, they stepped out into the busy lobby.

"We've got to walk Kaylee before we do anything else," said Louis, minding the bunch of hurried people.

"Righto." Cam anxiously guarded the elder one, pushing the tall people aside as though no one could possibly matter more than Louis who was severely injured and on a terrible, unsettling, disgustingly depressing limp.

"Excuse me!" Cam order, nudging everyone aside by their hips and backsides. "Move it or lose it, please, my babysitter coming through!"

"Cam!"

"Pardon me, please, ladies. I have my babysitter."

Louis hopped onto his crutches once the child began getting lost in the crowd, easily shoving past others. "Cameron," Louis scorned, and his voice was towering. "Come here."

The little one turned a bit, opting to keep making a way for the man, but decided not. Cam slumped and started back to Louis. "Ah-h-h-h..."

"What?"

"I don't like being called that."

"I know," Louis said above the noise. "If you don't stop making a rumpus, we're not going to the park and we definitely won't see a film."

"What's a rumpus?"

"Like 'hullabaloo'."

"Oh, I know what's a hullabaloo. My mum says that."

Louis picked the little hand on that kid's little arm and kindly asked for a path to the queue.

It was in that moment that Louis realised the commotion. He looked at all of the people who were in grave shock, upheaval sworn on their faces. He could feel Cam's grip tighten on his fingers, arm hugging him by the leg as though he were Lacey.

There was a man coming in on a stretcher - a bulky man with bright yellow hair cemented to his blueish forehead. His eyes were shut unlike his mouth that hung open as if there was something he needed to say before the blinding lights of the hospital shushed him. They, the doctors, had exposed his bare chest by cutting apart his shirt that was no ordinary shirt. Louis kept one nearly identical.

"Cian?" Louis dropped his crutches, limping to the man wearily, and then desperately. "Cian!"

"Slow down there, boyo."

He stopped as someone threw themselves in front of him. "Pete--"

"Hey, got your leg done. You was looking a bit fucked up before on that limp and everything."

"What happened to Cian?" Louis pressed, looking over the man's broad shoulder. "Isn't he supposed to be with his family in Glasgow?"

"Yeah, he was." Pete glanced at the door that the unconscious man was getting wheeled out of. "He's been in a car accident."

Louis could nearly vomit at the words. "A car accident..? Is... Is he going to be okay? How--"

"They don't know. If he is, we won't be seeing him out of here for a long time."

"How long?"

The man shook his head, uncertainly.

"What about football? How's he going to play? He can't play like that, he's fucked up!"

"He's not playing."

"'Not playing'?" Louis relaxed in a few seconds of doubt. "He's got to play. Football's everything to him, he can't just not play. If he doesn't, we won't stand a chance next season, you know that. What are you gonna do with us knowing he's not playing? If he doesn't play... Well, what the fuck else are we going to do if he doesn't play, coach?"

"We'll find someone."

"Yeah, like who? Anyone in mind?"

"You know any random would be swearing off his morning wank for the rest of his life if he could play on this fucking team, Louis. That's the entire truth."

"No," the inferior lad argued with astounding passion. "The truth is that you won't find anyone like Cian ever. I'm babysitting my neighbours' kid, I've got to go."

It dawned on him as he began to walk away that he'd left Cam all alone on the other side of the room, and Louis was so caught up in confused frustration that he didn't hear the ring from Cam's emergency phone. Until soft, somewhat ill-sounding, cries from the reception queue found its deranged way to Louis' ears, an alarm in his head going off like a wake-up call.

"Cam!"

There was no answer - not even a sniffle.

He looked for the child, his dearest neighbour, in all the corners and crouches, and just as he went into shock, someone patted his leg.

"You left me, Louis," Cam pouted, reprimanding him bravely. "I picked up your crutches and then you were gone. You didn't even answer when I phoned you. It was a _emergency_."

"I'm sorry, I am." He took his crutches and pulled the headphones off Cam's head. "I promise I won't leave you again."

"You better not, or I'll bust you."

"Hey, that's--"

"I'll bust you, Louis."

"Fine. That's fine."

"And you forgot to rub my neck."

Upon arriving home, they'd stopped at McDonald's for ice cream sundaes, and that bothered Louis. As he looked down at his - that bleached vanilla dessert with runny chocolate syrup and stale peanuts - a hot feeling grew in his stomach.

"Excuse me," Louis said, knocking on the drive-up window.

The employee pushed it open and stuck his head out. "What?"

"Well, I got two ice creams and only one spoon, so either fetch me another one or I'll pull you out the window to get it myself."

He scrunched up his nose and handed Louis a second utensil packet, demanding that he have a good day before shutting the doors.

Louis sighed and stabbed his sundae with the spoon. The impulse to throw his and Cam's ice cream at the side of the building grew into a battle of guns and cannons, breathing erratically and dangerously quick. The sundae looked unholy. It was a damned masterpiece that was no masterpiece at all. The chocolate dripping down the edges on the cup was no better than mud. He wanted to rip the steering wheel off the car.

An adolescent honked at him for holding back the queue, frightening Louis out of a unannounced coma.

Sitting and listening to his neighbour's humming, Louis' shoulders dropped, he pulled out of the drive-by.

Louis reached to the backseat and patted Cam's knee.

"Huh?"

"What are you listening to?"

"Tachaykovy."

"What?"

"Takavosy."

"Give." Louis took the iPod and chuckled as he read the artist's name. "Tchaikovsky."

"There's a _T_ in it."

"The _T_ is silent," he said, unplugging the headphones. As Cam exclaimed, complaining about the lack of music, Louis sought his auxiliary cord, syncing the iPod to the stereo.

A mass of orchestral instruments overpowered the sound of the engine, violins fluttering about the windows like gnats on a hot, sticky summers day.

Louis frowned. "What is this?" he commanded.

" _Tchai_ kovsky's Symphony No. 5 Opera 64."

"Opera 64? What kind of six-year-old listens to opera?"

"The smart kind."

"I didn't listen to opera when I was your age. You saying I'm not smart?"

"Oh, no," the child affirmed, wearing the proudest grin. "You and Mum are the smartest people I know."

Louis gulped. He was suddenly as smart as a lady who didn't understand sarcasm and hardly managed to differentiate her left from her right. He was downgraded to a 1960s housewife who never learned to read until her 25th birthday. He was as smart as ten-year-old girl.

However shocked, he couldn't have been mistaken - Louis adored Lacey. Being a decade her junior, he always respected Missus Wolff even in times of frustration. He felt something for her that he never felt for anyone. She was a mother, a sister, a daughter and a friend all rolled up in one; someone to confess to if you didn't want your secrets getting out, for she would often forget them anyway. Although he appreciated the reality of this woman, he couldn't help but be offended.

"Thanks," he muttered.

The two returned to the neighbourhood to handle a few errands. Cam was allowed nowhere past two o'clock without having a nap, so as Louis sent the sweet child up with the keys, he let himself in next door to feed and walk Kaylee. He was able to exercise her for fifteen minutes before it became a hassle, then let her off the leash for a short while to play. When she declared she was ready to go home, Louis followed her back, retrieving the post.

The Wolff residence was lovely. The foundation was built to just match all the others on the block, but hadn't been designed as such, like Louis'. The Wolff's house was smaller than the rest - a bird nest, a rabbits den - but had so much more happening inside. Mister Wolff was a veteran. He had just returned from Afghanistan, finding work as manager of a Pendragon division. The last time he had seen his family with his own eyes, Cam was three. It was a miracle that his child remembered his face after so long. Missus Wolff's primary dream was to have a baby for she was expected to be forever barren. She, too, achieved a miraculous phenomenon when exciting herself about an unexpected morning sickness in a late September setting. Gaining 18 kilos in eight months, she gave birth to her first and last child. The confident, strangely intellectual, premature love of London's life was Cameron Darling Wolff. Cam was more than what anyone could describe. Not even Lacey could put together the words to limn such a gem (and Lacey knew lots of pretty words). Cam was short and small for just six and had a trouble with asthma and type 1 diabetes, but sometimes Louis wondered if his little neighbour knew that much. To see that cherub run and talk on and on about school and cartoons, he realised that nothing was more important than happiness in the moment. Though Louis was reluctant to practice that philosophy.

Louis shuffled through the electricity bills, the water bills and a belated birthday card to be sent out to an Aliza Morello as he put the mail on the table. Later, he searched the house for something else to do. He watered the plants, made Cam's bed, swept the dining room floor, but he still felt stressed. Though he knew he was babysitting terribly, he didn't wish to go back to his. No activities could subdue his total exhaustion with physically being home besides getting away for just a second. If the entire off-season continued just the same, he would lose his hair again. He felt allergic to home.

The man dove into his pocket for a cigarette, wandering into the kitchen to sought out the pack of matches beneath the sink. He lay on the ground to duck under the pipe and snatched the box, dusting it off from the last barbecue, slashing a match on. His cigarette trembled between his lips, jumping away from the fire, but as it neared his face, he stopped. The flame stared him in the eyes, jittering painfully, nervously, buying its time before it would meet Louis' fingers or the nicotine. It burnt his fingers, reaching the end of the stick quicker than expected. He dropped the match and patted it out with his hand, lighting his cigarette with another.

Louis pulled himself up with the smoke and licked his lips. Kaylee was staring at him from under the table, chin on her paws whilst wearing a sad and intrigued look. Louis didn't like being stared at very much.

He turned the other way and opened the refrigerator, trading the dirty flavour of tobacco for a much sweeter taste. "A Wispa with my name on it," Louis beamed, snatching the candy bar and peeling off the note reading for Louis in quite curly attempted cursive handwriting.

Going back and forth between chocolate and cigarette, a disgusting mixture that Louis didn't care to exaggerate, he closed the fridge.

An paper fluttered on the door, flapping and waving until it settled, laying flat on the cheap, stained surface. Louis squinted to read it. The handwriting was so small, he might have needed to limp home to put in his contacts, but he could read the letters of he tried. And he tried very hard once spotting a serious tone of voice.

 

Mr. and Mrs. Wolff,  
I apologise for not being able to tell you this in person, but I'm leaving this letter to inform you that seeing after running the tests, Cameron will most likely not survive childhood. She is suffering a kidney disease due to the TD1 that is extremely rare in children, especially at her age. The odds that she will live five more years are very small, but with the right care, we might see her reach seven or eight.  
Please contact me to discuss how we can proceed.

  
Dr. L.J. Rich

 

Louis dropped his Wispa, his cigarette falling, too, from his lips that acutely separated in horror. But soon the horror became something of sheer concern, contemplation that what he was reading wasn't affiliated with whom he was reading about, though its prompt about Cameron was affirmed as her name was mentioned twice and the letter hung upon the refrigerator of her parents' kitchen.

He went next door, somehow no longer subjected to disinclination.

Cam was sat at the couch when he opened the door, a bowl of tomato soup that she had masterfully heated in the microwave held to her chest.

Louis pouted his lips as she laughed at the cartoon that played, a doleful lump formed at the bottom of his throat, in thought of things that he'd never wish to think. He fumbled for a cigarette, struggling to ignite the tail with the lighter he kept by the door.

Cam looked back once hearing the spark. "Want me to make you a soup?" she asked in a monotonous, raspy kind of voice.

Louis nodded, displaying a lying smile, and flicked the lighter over and over again repeatedly, shielding his cigarette from the fan's breeze and his sadness from God's eyes.

Whilst Cam got up to prepare the canned soup, the man, with a tired, unimaginable face, sat to the couch, sobbing along every inhale of death in a stick. He'd run his hand over his head, the little bit of hair comforting him the way silk comforts the shoulders. But this did not suffice. His hands shook as his body did, it realising now that his mind felt cold.

Cam returned in a few minutes or so with Louis' soup on a tray with a side of bread and beans and iced beer poured into a plastic cup shaped like a flower. She placed the tray on the carpet, fetched the lap table, and set everything before him, placing a wash cloth on the upper part of his cast.

Painfully removing his cigarette, he smiled. "Thank you, love," Louis mumbled.

She held out her hand. "Fag?"

"When I've finished."

"The soup will get cold."

"I'll just warm it up again."

He looked away from the child, seeing into her dark, soulful eyes and knowing something about her that seemed so illegal, shakily raising his hand to to his lips. Aware that Cam might try to take it from him, he held onto that cigarette like every aspect of his life depended on it. He sucked out the quietus, breathing it in, absorbing it all into his skin and keeping it there. Down to the cherry in seconds, Cam plucked the bottom from his fingers and squashed it in the ashtray. And then she sat beside him, slurping up her cold soup and watered-down sugar-free juice, leant against Louis' shoulder as she didn't realise how he was trapping his mouth behind his hand, wheezing softly at her touch.


	3. the colour of chocolate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> louis lives in his brain and his brain is rotten rotten rotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please forgive my mistakes I haven't proof read some parts yet
> 
> ps this should take off in chapter 4 or 5 so expect something nice :) n I love comments so leave one even if u hate me n my writing or whatever I love attention obviously
> 
> side note:::: don't ask for my social media or personal info im not giving it or my name out but u can call me dad

When Cam's parents arrived home, Louis was already waiting by the backdoor. His hands were by his sides, vexed and anxious like someone tricked him into wearing boxing gloves that he couldn't remove. A cigarette hissed between his lips, fogging the air between his face and the glass, warming the cool atmosphere that was loathsome and jealous. The weather was so remarkably jealous of the heat in the boy's body, inside the estate houses and apart of Louis' cigarette that it nearly pinched out the light. He stood in that dark September weather engulfed in its tight embrace as if to murder him, seeping its anger toward his vital organs like spit in the dirt.

Louis glared into the house, his stale smokers breath fanning the door, punching the window harder and harder to intrude on anyone who might be in. Of course there was no one in - no one but the dog who sat at the end of the dining room staring back.

Andy came traipsing in with his wife on his arm, smiling down at her as if he hadn't already been swimming in her deep, voluptuous endearment all day.

Louis let himself in as they did, and Kaylee jumped excitedly that he finally came to greet her. "Go upstairs, put your pajamas on," the boy said, shooing Cam away.

Lacey waved to her child as she passed, grinning in her smudged lipstick.

"How was your time together?" Louis asked hastily, tapping his cigarette to the side of his boot.

Andy shrugged and slipped out of his coat. "It was nice."

"It was _really_ nice!" Lacey explained, swooning about her evening with her hands by her face. "Andy took me to that big aquarium. He knows how I love those sea creatures. And we went to that French-style restaurant down by the big park for lunch, and for dinner we had pasta at an Italian place. I forget what it's called."

"It's Enoteca Turi, love."

"Yes, Enoteca Turi!"

"You've been there, Louis, haven't you?"

  
The other tilted his head back and forth. "I think so, yeah. I wanted to--"

"Hey, you got casted," Andy beamed, patting his neighbour on the shoulder on his way for a drink. "How long are you to wear it? It looks bloody uncomfortable."

"It is. I wear it into November. Can I speak to you outside?"

"In that shit weather? What's that about?"

"I'll tell you. Grab me a lager." Louis stepped out into the cold night, Kaylee galloping behind him for a bit of fresh air.

He waddled over to a deck chair, stood his crutches against the brick pillar as he took a seat and another cigarette, though he wanted to bite it and rip it up. Cam's bedroom light flickered off at the far side of the house, which Louis could have sworn went out as his cigarette went aflame. The aroma of it, all it was and all it wasn't, seemed terrible. It smelled terrible and it smelled amazing. Just like the taste that didn't taste like anything but the colour grey. Clutching the filter, his fingers would start to taste and smell the same way before he knew it. But he sat in the thin winds of the night, living in a cigarette or two, looking into the house that he adored so.

Andy met him after a minute. He was entirely stripped of his day's events, any evidence that was once on him hidden somewhere in the front of his mind. "What's going on?" he said, handing Louis a beer. He sat down across him, leaning in as though the breeze might carry Louis' thoughts closer.

"How's Cam doing?" the boy began.

"She's good. Excited to go back to school, see her mates again." Andy laughed, running a hand over his hair. "I can't believe she got suspended. But, you know, kids... they just don't know how to go about them situations yet. Someone makes like they're gonna hit you, makes you flinch and everything, you can't just punch them out of fear, you know?"

"Yeah."

"I'm not defending that prick. If he had actually hit her, I'd have done some pretty fucked up shit. But he's just a wee kid, he didn't know any better. No one probably told him not to throw hands at girls, especially with ones that are bigger than him."

"Yeah, Cam's quite tall," Louis agreed, holding his cigarette away to steal a taste of Betty Stogs. "She is _really_ tall, actually, and lanky."

"She's like a cute Great Dane."

"I can see that, yeah. Great Danes, though, they've got, um..." He turned back to smoke. "They've got a lot of health problems, don't they?"

"I reckon so."

"And Cam? She's doing okay with diabetes?"

The elder man looked at him confusedly, biting excess alcohol off his lips with grave discomfort as he waited for Louis to change the subject. But he never did. "Yeah, she's fine," Andy declared.

"You're sure? She seems to be a bit drained sometimes--"

"She's fine, she's tired. She's six, 6-year-olds get tired easily."

Louis then mentioned the letter on the refrigerator. He explained walking the dog and collecting the post, the matches, the Wispa, drawing a final conclusion that it wasn't his business, but that he would like to know what Dr. L.J. Rich meant by "Cameron will most likely not survive childhood." Louis didn't very much expect an answer, but he certainly had not expected Andy, a counselor, a patriarch, a strict, indefatigable businessman, to fall into upset so quickly.

"She's just a baby," he groaned, putting his face in his hands. "She's a baby, she's my little girl. Everything we try doesn't work. She's getting so old so fast. Every birthday, every holiday, every single mark of her height on the wall is a constant reminder that she's not even growing up. She's growing down. Every year is a year I'm afraid she'll be gone."

Louis glanced into the house, finding Cam and Lacey dancing a waltz in the living room. "Does she know?"

Andy eyed the other lad like he'd been threatened. "What do you mean 'does she know?' Of course she doesn't fucking know. What kind of question is that?"

"If no one's told her, then why is the letter on the fridge? She can read, Andy. You know that, don't you?"

"I know my daughter can fucking read!" The man stood up, pacing away to gather an argument, nibbling his nails as he reverted to an adolescent type of anxiety.

Louis rose from his chair, despising his leg that wouldn't move for him. "I'm not saying you should tell her," Louis softly spoke. "I would think you a cruel, sadistic father if you told your own child that they're dying. You're right not telling her."

Andy gulped and looked over his shoulder for assurance, turning back in a neglectful way, submerging into a grosser pit of guilt. "You can't be honest with them," he mumbled, looking inside the house. "Even when you tell the truth, it becomes a lie later or it just hurts. I don't want her to be afraid to die and I don't want her to hate me for not helping her. I want to help her, I want to be there for her, but it's... It's inevitable. I'd never tell her what's happening to her. If she found out-- I swear to God, Louis, if you tell her--"

"I won't. And if she did somehow find out, she'd never hate you." Louis stamped out his cigarette, toeing it into the grass along with any sort of uncertainties he might have carried. "She'll love you no matter what, whether she knows or not."

"But she can't know. Lacey, she's... She ignores the fact that we're losing Cam soon and I wonder if she's forgotten." Andy went back for his beer, tapping his fingers against the can after taking several long sips. "I'm always having to remind her and I hate reminding her. You should see her face when she goes into the kitchen and sees the letter. I feel like I'm torturing her!"

"She's just going through a hard time, both of you. It's hard for me, too. You're losing someone you love - it's appropriate to grieve. And Cam, she..." Louis paused. "I can't imagine what she might be thinking. Feeling. I wonder if she might know already. To think of how smart she is, she'd be able to put some of these pieces together."

"No, there's no way she can know. She takes pain-relieving medicine. We tell her it's vitamins."

"I don't know if she should live like this."

Andy turned to face him, completely appalled by the noisy ideas racing in his head. "Like what?" he demanded, an offended glare in his eyes. "The way she grew up? With me and my wife raising her? Are we not good enough for her now that she's ill and dying?"

"You know that's not what I meant."

"Well, I don't know what you meant."

Sighing, fisting his hands and scratching his palms with his nails, he tried to force his eyes away from Andy's shirt where a grass stain lay. But he stared at it, utterly gone after seconds, hypnotically. "I just mean she's..." Louis went in an out of focus. "She needs to be doing something fun like... What does she like to do?"

"Nothing she can't do here," the elder man argued. "Why? Gonna get her emancipated?"

"No."

The way thoughts hammered in his brain, rattling round the place like things, somewhere deep inside, were loose. He couldn't stop thinking about Andy's terrible grass stain, even as the man yelled at him and waved his hand back and forth in his face. That disgusting, godawful stain had eyes that looked and him, provoking a spat between them: And Louis knew he was thinking crazy. He heard Andy speak and saw him grow frustrated - assumed that maybe his good friend had finally made to shut him out - but that was beyond the circumstance. Louis was just fine. He couldn't concentrate, however, on anything that didn't make him want to put a hole in the drywall, but he was perfectly fine.

Louis blinked and responded to Andy's confused expression. "I'm gonna put her in singing lessons," he mumbled, not realising that the man backed away tensely. "Hope you don't mind."

Before the weekend turned into a Monday, Louis enrolled Cam in the children's opera lessons at DeBord University of Performing Arts. It was a large school with a large population of enrollment, as even the children's programs carried enormous numbers that no adult in their right mind could condone. Though it was wildly popular for different cultures and styles of dance and music, the most known being opera, that allowed most of its students to succeed in the sort of business they longed to pursue. But Cam would not be attending any courses to lead her in the direction she thought to follow. She'd be in the children's course, lessons too boring for a kid of her brilliance, learning the things she had interest in, practicing techniques she wished to know and making friends that would adore her the way that everyone else had.

"Take the headphones off, Darling."

"I'm listening to Takavosy."

"Tchaikovsky," Louis corrected, pulling the headphones off Cam's ears. "You need to pay attention to where we're going in case you gotta go to the toilet or something."

"I already seen the toilets and I'm wearing my name sticker so I won't get lost." The girl tripped over Louis' cast, stumbling awkwardly about for a moment. "What do you think I'll learn today?"

Louis shrugged. "How to read music."

"No, not yet. I'll learn how to stand straight and hold my hands like a saint."

"Why do you want to learn opera anyway?" Louis wondered, moving through the tight corridor in search for the children's class. "Do they even have kid opera singers?"

"They obviously have to start somewhere, in case you didn't know."

"In case you didn't know, I don't have to babysit you. I'll take you home right now, sassy-pants."

"'Sassy-pants?'"

"You do sass me."

"Well..." Cam thought long and hard to find something clever and snarky to reply with. "Well, you're old," she decided, though she decided that a lot of the time.

"I am not--!"

"And you're the most sassy. You're the sassy-pants in this relationship, and I'm the calm and collected one."

"You don't know what calm and collected means."

They found the room number. Suddenly Louis understood what Andy meant as he explained the way it felt for time to no longer seem unlimited.

He sought to crouch down, but very helplessly couldn't. Bowing his head, Louis gulped, peering into the classroom. A tall woman with short, wavy hair was sat amongst the children that wouldn't settle down no matter how many times she politely asked it of them; all students spoke chaotically, running up and down the musical staff carpeting and between perfectly stationed stands, besides one little boy at the miniature drum kit. And even another kid that looked outrageously similar sat at the boy's feet, but he had his fingers up his nose.

Louis petted Cam's hair back. "Go make friends with them lads over there," he insisted, pulling the girl's hair into a ponytail. "Don't touch their hands, though, nor let them touch you or vise-versa. Listen to your teacher and don't do anything she doesn't tell you to do. If she tells me you've been using your iPod when you're not supposed to, I'll be really upset."

The small girl nodded, swishing her hairdo round her head and had mussed it all up.

"I'll be right here when it's finished."

He had little ideas in his mind of what he'd like to say to her, but like any other excited 6-year-old, she was already jumping through the door. Louis watched her for a while. He watched her approach the two drum kit boys and call herself Cam, asking what they were called, too, and started to feel the symbols on the drums. When the teacher - "Miss Tara" is what the board said - welcomed everyone in, had introduced a "getting to know you" game where Cam stuck to the drum boys like glue. And looking at them when they didn't realise, found that their hair was longer than the other boys' and even some girls', so she removed her hair-tie.

Louis almost turned too quickly to see her pull her shorts down a bit past her hips like another pupil's shorts, but it was nothing new. Louis smiled and crossed his arms.

It was difficult getting out of there. He stood still amongst the rushing crowd all with instruments and papers and looks of importance on their faces. Disregarding the fact that people were nearly trampling his boot and he trampled their shoes back, the ache in his stomach swelled like a blister - like a sore on the sole after a long day of walking the outlets. Except his soul was sore along with his heart and twisted up ankle. He couldn't have been in any more pain inside or out if someone knocked him over and stepped on his good leg to only break that, as well.

Evidently as theorised, someone turned into him as he went to peep through the high-set window at the side of the room, stepped lightly on Louis' casted foot. "Sorry," they said - a person with shoulder-length hair and a hushed, gravelly tone - whilst scooting by. They (a him, Louis thought) didn't so much as look back to check Louis' okay. Had not cared to wonder if they had further injured an injured man. They walked away into the kids' lesson and shut the door, lowered the shades to the window and disappeared in silence.

Louis' eyes were wide. His body was terrified. There was a rotten seed bred of appalled emotion growing from his toes to his skull. The barbaric act planted such a distorted thought within him, deep at the far end of his brain. So absolutely buried in the guts of things, his perception of exactly what had happened came back out jumbled up and crooked. Utterly the wrong way. The only thing that managed to keep him from pounding on the door and demanding a true, sentimental apology, for just breathing and pondering ways to settle the assault didn't suffice, was Cam.

He imagined her learning the names of the white keys on a piano and how to keep a beat. So then he went home.

Louis sat in the car as per usual. The radio was on one of those buzzing stations, Dave Mathews or someone with that special sort of voice humming in the background. Whomever must had been singing about a girl; a typical radio-ready song. There was no telling what the possibly love-struck man sang robotically about, however, unfortunately. Louis was sat noiselessly like a vegetable listening to only his bewildering subconscious memory.

He watched the road ahead for a little time, and then the clock that was two hours and eight minutes behind, finding the tiny score on the top of the steering wheel somewhat annoying. Although anyone who might have peeked through his window would see a man picking at the skin of what was to be a "true man"'s best friend and mumbling what would seem like profanities. Louis was intrigued and submerged in deep, deep cogitation.  
The flesh peeled back smooth as a scab. "Don't worry," Louis chuckled in a whisper, harshly biting his lips. "No one will know what's happened."

A knocking came hammering down in the man's ear, causing chaos in his chest and a rampage in his head. He sat up in a shock, shaken hands jumping away from the wheel he damaged as he looked out the window.

"Louis!" Lacey exclaimed, waving a bag of treats at him. "Why haven't you gotten your footie uniform back? I want to see you in it."

The man's heart was violently racing, his head feeling hot. "I already said, Missus Wolff," Louis reminded her, "I don't have it back till fall."

"Does it take that long to wash?"

"No, but it was rather gross."

"That's why you should have gave it to me, I would've done it." She backed away to let Louis open his car door. "I wash all Cam's clothes and they look fine. They're lovely."

"They definitely are."

As Louis climbed out into the sun, and as Lacey softly shut the door behind him, he wondered how much longer he could keep up his uniform story. Surely the woman was capable of figuring that Louis just didn't want to chat about football anymore as long as playing wasn't an option. Like many things, it upset him. He was no good at busying himself with substitute fun, as not to much was fun to him. Everything made him mad, and if he wasn't mad, he'd anger himself because he could. Lacey's slightly crooked lipstick was creating a conflict with Louis' feelings. He thought well about Lacey Wolff, but her lipstick was something else.

Fighting the urge to rub off the lady's red lip stain, he smiled undoubtably halfhearted, however, luckily, Lacey wasn't the best at picking up unhappy facial expression.

"You know, it's actually great that we ran into each other," Louis said, a wide grin coming onto the woman's face. "I wanted to tell you that I just dropped Cam at her singing lesson and found out they do recitals and that. I'm not sure--"

"Oh, I would _love_ to see Cam at a recital! When is it?"

"I'm not really sure. Ought to be soon, though, hasn't it?"

"Yes, it has!"

Louis chuckled and shook his head. "I'll find out," said the young man. "I'm picking her up in an hour or so, so I'll ask then."

"An hour or _so_?" She seemed lost. "If I have a shower now I should have time to get ready. But, oh dear, the dog... Kaylee shouldn't be left alone too long in case she needs to go."

"You wanna come?"

"But the dog, Louis."

"It shouldn't be long. And if you let Kaylee out now, she won't need to go later."

"Yeah," Lacey whispered, placing her hands on her hair. "Why don't you keep her company as I wash? I got a big, fat piece of German chocolate cake in the fridge for you, dear."

"Uh-oh." He noticeably brightened as he followed her toward the house. "You do spoil me, Missus Wolff."

"We're all already spoiled!" the woman beamed, throwing her arms in ecstasy. "It's our job to be spoiled rotten and stay humble as a sea turtle!"

Louis sat to the couch, Kaylee curled up beside him, a tennis ball lodged in her mouth and sleep in her eyes. The television was on as well as the radio with its staticky station in the kitchen, but wasn't attentive to either. As always he stared at something across him and confronted the issue with it; why it bothered him so. And he thought about football and his leg he wouldn't be able to play on for the next few months. He thought about his dearest neighbour Cam and her illness, the little things that came with it, and perhaps even the man who'd stepped on his boot before. If Louis were to see that man again, he'd find it difficult not to mention how stupid and insensitive he was for trampling a crippled person. His fingers bunched to white-knuckled fists imagining the back of the stranger's curly head. How someone could have the nerve to do something so reckless and not properly apologise was beyond Louis' understanding.

After getting a hand waved in front of his face, Louis brought along Missus Wolff for the drive to the university, stopping for a cup of coffee and a chocolate biscuit for the lady. The biscuit smelled horribly sweet and the coffee tasting too bitter to drink. He was annoyed by his situation currently and, though it was lifting, the woman's singing wth his music didn't make things any better.

Louis wasn't sure what to do once he got there. As promised he asked about the children's recitals and got himself a calendar, but as he waited in the corridor for the lesson to finished, he constructively thought of what to say to someone if he were to be approached. Taking note of Lacey's faultless ability to interact with anyone and everyone, discovering a tinge of jealousy. He knew how to make friends - he did not suffer social awkwardness. He did, however, feel gravely uncomfortable at this particular moment for people walked throughout the lobby and didn't acknowledge him even if he begged them to.

"The first time I played French horn, I was eight. My uncle played before he died a couple years ago. He was basically my mentor."

Lacey was sat beside a scraggly young man in a baggy shirt and pajama bottoms. She was blown away with enthrallment and could not remember to apologise for his loss.

"My husband played the French horn when he was in college," Missus Wolff said brightly. "He doesn't play anymore, but he used to play songs for our baby. Even when she was a wee kid she loved that sort of sound."

"My brother was that way, as well. He's five now, yeah, but when he was round two years old, he was completely fond of the violin."

"He was what?" As Lacey leaned in to listen, so did Louis as sneakily as possible.

"Fond of violin."

Louis sunk back in his chair.

"'Fond of violin,'" she repeated. "'My neighbour says things like that all the time. He is the most lovely."

The man couldn't help but laugh.

Then Lacey said: "Here he is!"

With a dumbfounded face, the university student looked where Lacey referred him, mouth gaping slightly as he breathed in the idolised, well-accomplished lad's presence. "Oh..." he breathed, scrambling to offer his hand. "Wow, hi. Sorry, I completely blanked. I'm shit at remembering faces, but, Jesus, dude, it's so great to meet you. I'm Dominic."

"Louis." The elder man left his hand limp in his double-handed shake. "That's a hell of a introduction."

"Yeah, sorry. I'm a huge fan, you don't even know. It's such a pleasure."

"Don't sweat it, mate."

The lady between them clapped her hands together, swooning about the words going back and forth. Although Louis could see Dominic wanted to inquire about his injury, Lacey could not. "Such sweet things! Louis babysits Cam, kinda like a nanny. That's how I know him. They get on so nicely, these two. Really! They _adore_ each other so. He even thought to put Cam in these choir classes 'cause Andy - that's my husband Andy - He works from 9:00 to 9:00 most days, so it works out, as it goes."

"She's in the children's choir?" Dominic asked. "Is she just starting?"

"Yeah."

"The director for that program is utterly amazing, and so is the instructor. You'll just love her."

Shortly afterward Louis and Lacey stood to wait outside with all the other adults collecting their kids. There was a little boy with a brownie in one hand and a puppy in another. Both the dog and the child were filthy, an odor coming from on of them. The boy was staring at Louis' leg, then when he blinked after what felt like minutes, he started to stare him in the face.

Louis darted his head quickly.

The lot waited for a change in the air. They waited for gusts of wind carrying kites and loudness. Evidently, listening to couples argue couldn't fill this void. And suddenly Louis was hearing the door open and Cam was walking out with a small booklet, a pencil and her iPod stuck in her back pocket.

Louis waved for her attention, for she was tall enough to stand on her tiptoes to find his tattoos on his raised arm all the way in the back.

She shove her way to the edge of the crowd and jabbed Louis in the stomach.

"Hey, watch it!" he said, pushing her at the side of the head.

"You said you'd be here right when I got out." Cam put her things in Louis' face until he sighed and held them for her.

"I was here for twenty minutes," the man explained. "I couldn't just stand here for your teacher to finally decide to let you out. If we're getting technical here, you were the one that wasn't where they were supposed to be."

"You liar."

"Don't make me tell your mum how rude you are. You know how she hates to hear bad things about you."

Can stuck her tongue out, but immediately swallowed it when her mother came emerging.

Wandering with wide eyes, Lacey examined the other children on the lookout for her own and shouted once realising Cam's shoulder-length black hair. She jumped into their interaction and smashed the girl's face against her stomach. It was somewhat inappropriate, the woman being in high heels thus positioning her daughter's fave not where intended, but no one had token a second gander.

"Your recital is in two weeks," Missus Wolff broached. "What do you have to wear? I can make your outfit."

Cam hugged her mum back. "They haven't said. I didn't know we have a recital."

"Two weeks."

The three of them left the building before they could get lost in the lunch rush.

It was much warmer than Louis expected. The sun shine brighter and the wind had stilled; the air was nice an soul-cleaning. His skin felt like a jumper and his hands a pain of wool gloves. Though it was August feeding their parts of Europe trading bits of icy weather, it was a nearly perfect day for football. "Nearly perfect" was san accurate description to him knowing easily without reminder that he was unable to play any sports that he was remotely interested in. He was limping to his parking space and preparing to humiliating himself by performing his maneuver into his car. Because he could not bend his leg, he felt horribly ridiculous sitting in the driver seat with the chair pushed all the way back so that nobody could sit behind him in they wanted to, and Cam had.

"How was you class?" Louis asked his little neighbour upon reaching traffic. "Did you learn how to hold your hands like a saint?"

"We learned _Hello, My Name is Joe_."

" _Hello, My Name is Joe_?" Louis laughed.

"It's a game."

"Yeah, I know what it is. Did you like it?"

"No."

He scrunched his brows up. "Why?"

"'Cause."

In comparison to his previous emotions for the past few years, Louis was falling into a heap of sadness. For the past few years, Louis Tomlinson, cherished player for the Manchester football team, had been doing just swell as of late - had consistently been working of his attitude to better himself and spreading happiness whilst speaking to others, but he, unfortunately, took ten whole steps back, each one the length of a year. Unfortunately he was sixteen again.

He'd begun treating his mind poorly, regurgitated ideas that he was wasting everyone's time and shortening everyone's patience being regressed to crutches, starting to slither his malicious intent into the places of his brain that mustn't be messed with.

More than a mess is what his head was. On the outside, clearly pleasing to the eye, it was nice and neat. He had an ideal skull shape, a probably delightful head of hair if he chose to let it grow out. His head was shaved more often than not, but that didn't determine his likelihood of hiding his thoughts. Louis barricaded his feelings because every single one was his deepest darkest secret he'd allow no person to figure out.

Beyond the skull at the back region of the brain, memory is not detained - Louis knew this. In his year eleven chemistry course, he presented neurobiology research about the human brain. Aspects of his brief exploration his classmates found peculiar consisted primarily of mental muscle memory commonly called or associated with instinct. For example (a reference Louis used at fifteen): riding a bicycle includes memory, muscle memory, and mental muscle memory. One cannot properly ride a bicycle after, inside his illustration, years of not having not ridden. Memory connects the recognition of the bicycle to the knowing to sit on the seat, operate the brakes, push the pedals, etc.. whilst muscle memory gives the understanding of how to ride the bike. Mental muscle memory is what makes both concepts one.

Louis then branched off into how general memory is composed and distributed to "the front" of the brain as opposed to the back where most assumed memory comes from. This is, however, where the processing occurs and is not to be confused with the brain's grey and white matter which involves muscle control and sensory perception, of which does have to do with memory, yet not entirely. To conclude his research with an indelible statement, Louis broached: "My favourite part of the brain is its grey matter. You can recall certain things because of it - sometimes stuff you don't want to think about. That's why it's also my least favourite. Grey matter is responsible for your speaking, hearing and other senses, and that's the admirable thing. But sometimes what we regret are things we know we could have stopped, so it's upsetting to me that one part of the brain lets you remember horrible experiences that the same part could have prevented."

Louis emotions were gradually turning to symptoms of illness. For no apparent reason to anyone apart from those who might have been aware of Cameron Darling's inevitable death, Louis was a little leaf growing in a bed of rotten flowers, and his mind was the seed.

"Hey."

The man peeked through one eye, reluctant to fully lunge out of sleep.

Cam was hovering above his head, her dark, staticky hair forming a canopy round them.

"What?" Louis moaned.

"I've left my headphones at my choir class."

"Tell your dad to get 'em tomorrow."

"He'll be mad," the child whispered, her chocolate-inhabited breath flying here and there. "I got in trouble."

"Cameron!" Louis knew no immediate punishment than calling his neighbour by her first name. "I told you not the use them when you weren't supposed to. Have I got to tell your parents?"

"No, I didn't even use it." The girl climbed up over his body, leaping to the opposite end of his Star Wars bed. "I swear I didn't use it, I just had 'em on my neck, is all. The other teacher got mad at me for that. 'I'll return them when we've finished,' he said, but he didn't do that."

Louis distinctly remembered a man in Cam's choir lesson. He remembered a tall person with medium-length hair, but not the face. He could remember perfectly that this person trampled his sprained toe and didn't apologise. There was hardly a way to decide if these men were a single man, but the mere possibility got Louis to sit up quickly with anger. "What other teacher?" he pressed, subconsciously cracking his knuckles. "You've got two of them?"

The 6-year-old made a confused expression and scratched her scalp. "Dunno. He's tall. Taller than Dad."

"What's he look like?"

"Curly hair like DNA. It's like the colour of chocolate."


	4. the secret illness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> friends don't make secrets, especially not family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yep i've been dead but i have risen

"Where is he?"

"Hmm…" Cam looked round the classroom, her hand on her head as if to push her words out of her mouth like Play–Dough. “I don't see him."

Louis pointed to a man with relatively long hair. "That's not him there?"

"No. That's Julian."

"Who?"

"Miss Tara's husband."

"So she's married? Why does she call herself ' _Miss_ Tara' then?"

Cam shrugged, in some way not understanding what Louis meant, but it seemed she didn’t care enough to say so. "I see my headphones there," she said finally, nodding toward the shelf. "Can you phone my dad and tell him I found 'em?"

"Sure… But your lesson begins in, like, two minutes. This guy should be here––"

"Can I sign your cast?"

Louis' gaze dropped to his feet, a little girl with dry snot under her nose just below him, swinging her arms back and forth patiently. The man sucked his lips between his teeth, pretending as though he needed time to think about that question, but was more than disgusted by the sight that was this child's poor hygiene and potential sticky fingers. "Um… No," he mumbled. "Maybe some other––"

"You can sign mine." Mouth gaping open, she stuck her SpongeBob–plastered finger right up to his eyes. "My teacher already has. He's drawn a purple sad face. Look."

"I see it, love."

Cam tittered and backed away toward the drum kit lads, leaving her frightened babysitter all alone with the Spongebob snot girl.

"All right, students, I hope you've remembered your music."

Louis turned hastily to the door once hearing Miss Tara's semi–familiar voice; he looked over to hopefully find the man who had trampled him and taken his neighbour’s very personal item without probable cause, if it was in fact the same man, but Miss Tara had walked in on her lonesome. Louis' eyes wandered intelligently for a face he wouldn’t recognise if he was suddenly lucky enough to spot it. He didn't find that face, but did see something. Before completely reverting to saying goodbye to Cam, Louis saw the back of the man’s head just like before, body in a suit as well, his hair long and curly like DNA still – and, still, exceedingly tall. He was taller than Louis, anyway – much taller. This man was likely to keep growing until twenty–five if he wasn’t yet that old. Nonetheless, Louis had not seen his face and definitely couldn’t follow him to discuss the issues he wished to discuss.

Having nothing better to do, once sending off his little neighbour, Louis went to wait outside and picked at his nails for the hour.

"Hey."

"Hm."

After release, dancing with her hands down the front of her trousers, Cam stared up at her babysitter with a flushed face and wet eyes. “My teacher wants you,” she said.

"What for?” Then Louis had a good look at her. “Have you got to pee?"

“Yeah.” She was crying already, as if the urine had to escape _somewhere_.

"Go then, for Christ's sake, Darling! Don't hold yourself!”

She was down the corridor pushing past uni students and professors straight for the toilet in two seconds.

Cam's teacher, Miss Tara, had had a serious question for Louis which he was to deliver, too, to Mister and Missus Wolff. The inquiry was brief, for the most part sensible, but did not sit comfortably in Louis' stomach. It was a big weight in his body like a tumor. He was, therefore, grateful that Cam was practicing proper hand-washing when the woman chatted to him – otherwise, he would have felt twice the amount of guilt on his meek shoulders.

Later in the day, the dog jumped when they went through the backdoor.

"Only us!" Louis called, kicking the bottoms of his shoes on the doormat. He petted Kaylee's head before she began to nose at Cam who said hello to her. "Your kid did well today. She learned hand signs for the, um… the... What is it?"

"Scale," said the child.

"The scale! She learned the scale!"

Normally, Lacey was charging out of the kitchen in an apron and some kind of thick dough on her hands, ready to kiss whomever bore the good news, but as Louis went into the kitchen to greet her, the emptiness of the house started to brutally settle in. The circumstance that was almost like all other circumstances was suddenly no longer normal. For the first time since the day she'd brought her newborn baby from hospital, Lacey was incredibly absent.

"Where's my mum?" Cam wondered, peeking into the back garden again. "Did Dad take her somewhere? ...Kaylee's bowl isn't full. My dad fills her bowl when he comes home, so that means he hasn't been home yet. But my mum's not here."

He heard her distress loud and clear, and he was guilty of not acknowledging it, yet even so he felt awful for her. His small, fragile neighbour who thankfully didn’t feel the need the read the letter from her doctor announcing her premature death had never felt worry for her mother until figuring that she somehow disappeared. And the letter, an old piece of paper that Louis hated so much and stared at nastily, still remained posted with the other outdated reports. Though this time, he scowled at that letter, thumbs trapped inside his angry fists, not for reasons that were always dignified, but because someone had drawn a sad face on the very bottom of the page in purple marker pen.

"I don't know what you want me to say, mate. I've no idea."

"How can you not know where she is? She's your wife."

"Yes, but it's not my job to keep track of everything she does. She’s a grown woman; she can care for herself."

Louis took a seat beside Cam on his living room sofa, Kaylee traipsing round the foreign environment. "So it doesn't surprise you at all that she's wandered off to God–knows–where doing God–knows–what, knowing that she's never done anything like this before? For fuck's sake, Andy, she doesn't even drive." He looked at Cam who had already been looking at him. "Sorry."

"All right, I guess I'll try giving her a call in a few minutes." The man sounded entirely indifferent.

"I've tried, she's not answering. Not even Cam's phone."

And as though by miracle, Andy grew the biggest realisation straight through the receiver. "Mate, you know what?" he began to recall. “I've just remembered. She broke her phone last night."

"How?"

The line fell hushed for a moment. "Well, last nights are none of your business, and it’s not really the point, is it?"

Louis could only imagine what that meant.

"She probably went to repair it. You know that shop is just down the street."

"A bit of a walk, innit, though? Unless she's got one sodding pair of comfortable shoes out of the quadrillion high heels in her closet, I doubt––"

"Watch yourself."

"When has she ever gone to get her phone repaired anyway?"

"About as many times she's broken a phone."

Before long, Louis agreed to remain calm and squander for Missus Wolff down the street. He hung up all too aggressively and beckoned Kaylee to come to him.

"What now?" Cam asked.

Louis hooked the dog’s lead to her collar, handing her over to the 6–year–old.

"Kaylee's too big. I'm not allowed to walk her.”

"You're not going to." Louis stood and limped toward the front door, the animal in the girl's grip scampering manically. "We're gonna get your mum from the shop and bring you both back here."

"But what if she's not there? What if she’s ran away?"

He stopped in his tracks. Feeling the paranoia swimming in the room, her attempted to potently reassure that there was no reason to think so irrationally, but seeing her panicked, brown face, an internal battle set off with bombs in his head.

Sighing, Louis squeezed Cam’s shoulders. "Now, why on Earth would your mum run away? Don't you reckon she'd miss you too much?" Cam shrugged at that. "Your mum loves you more than anything. Than anyone. Believe me, I know what kind of parents run from their kids and your mum ain’t one of them."

Cam huffed, trying not to shed any tears. "Your parents ran away from you?"

"Well…" Louis no longer knew what to say. "I–I was quite young. Younger than you. My dad just… You know, he just FO'd. I mean, it doesn't bother me."

"I know what FO means."

"Oh."

"But that's not right. I saw your dad one time in a picture. He didn't run away."

With that said, Louis became severely uncomfortable. "We best find your mum now," he said to her. "Let's go."

He beckoned the girl over and opened the door. He stood there, however, fingers tight on the handle and eyes glowing in disbelief; in near pique. Kaylee stuck her head through the break in the doorway and barked at the woman in the street coming out of an old white Cadillac missing its top. But, of course, stepping out into the garden too, smashing flower buds under her feet, Louis saw that the roof was simply displaced, as the car was a convertible, and the woman surely, in an obnoxiously lively yellow dress and a sun hat, was Missus Wolff.

Kaylee escaped Cam's hold and was racing off to nose into the skirt of Lacey's dress.

"That..." Louis was somehow breathless. "Who is that?"

Cam peeked out, her body halfway hidden from the alien vehicle parked next door. After a second of watching her dog sniff and paw at the driver who wouldn't step out, she slowly started walking the motorway. "That's my teacher," Cam gasped.

Louis gulped. His head started profusely pounding, hardly noticing his neighbour's obligation to join her mother in the sun with that man – her teacher who'd stepped on his foot and hadn't apologised.

Louis took one good look at what he could see from the doorway of his house, and he didn't think much. He saw chocolate DNA like Cam had described, the height on him even from sitting down, his rather exceptional posture, the expensive shirt. Louis couldn't see his face, _again_ , even then after so many missed opportunities, until the man did open his car door and finally stepped out.

It was official. He was much taller than Louis – he could tell straightaway as he stood beside Missus Wolff. He stepped out of his Cadillac to show off his milky skin, like milk chocolate, adorned in semi-formal work clothes, something Louis couldn't relate to. And Louis heard Cam holler to the man in that moment, calling him "Mister Harry". So then Louis found himself comparing this Mister Harry to each Harry he knew in life. There was Harry Madison from his year five class who had no parents or relatives who wanted him. If they were the same Harry, it would have been fantastic, but Harry Madison had fruity hair, not chocolatey. Harry Jettson was in Louis' theatre group in college; they had worked together during school plays, though Harry Jettson overdose on crystal meth his first month of university (or so Louis heard). Donovan Harry, a boy Louis used to babysit, resembled a youthful version of Cam's teacher, yet the age difference was too great to connect the two. This Mister Harry was a person whom Louis hadn't met before getting his feet trampled. Figuring such whilst witnessing him pet and talk to Kaylee like she was a person, his very pretty day clothes, ravishing, womanish hair and edible flesh on full display and not his face made Louis want nothing to do with him. Whether it stem from jealousy, disgust, or unacceptable enticement, he no longer wished to confront him. He couldn't even stomach the idea of revenge on him.

"Can I spend the night at Louis' house?" Cam then asked her mother. “I'll behave.”

The lady fixed her necklace. “You've school tomorrow, haven't you?"

"He can take me there. I'll go to sleep early, I promise."

"I dunno... Maybe you should ask your dad."

Louis was prepared to return to the quietude of his big, empty house and close his door on the conversation he obviously hadn't an invitation to, yet the comment made about himself by that man brought him back totally intrigued.

"I like that name," Mister Harry said.

Lacey pursued her lips as as leaned in. "What name?"

"Louis."

Gradually, Lacey's smile grew and grew at the compliment about her dearest neighbour. "Oh, I do fancy it, too!" she beamed. "It's so lovely. Louis Tomlinson... He plays football."

"He did." Cam flicked her hair back and scratched her armpit. "His leg is all messed up now."

"What happened?" Harry wondered.

"He got tripped. And then stepped on. Me and my dad watched a video of it on Youtube."

"Why?"

Louis couldn't have possibly agreed more with Harry's curiosity.

"Because he's my friend. We're supposed to know everything about each other. He saw the video of my broken hand, so I get to see when he broke his leg. My dad says it's all right 'cause everyone gets hurt one way or another. As long as nobody laughs––"

"As long as nobody laughs, it's okay to know a secret!" Unsurprisingly so, Missus Wolff always loved finishing other people's sentences. Her sense was magical. It was as if she was always reading one's mind and jumped at the chance to frighten them.

Not after long, the man left in his charming elder of a car, taking his irrelevance–adoring nose and lavish Saint Laurent shoes elsewhere once saying goodbye and reminding Lacey that giving her a ride to the shop was no bother at all.

Yet, surely, it must had been a bother. Recollecting well that not only Louis himself, but a good portion of individuals whom Lacey Wolff spoke to sometimes, more than rarely engaged with her because she was so innocently enthralling in ways she most likely didn't or couldn't think of. Louis had not told her this, nor did he plan on it, but she wasn't very fun to be round, and it mustn't only been him with such honesty. As a matter of fact, he'd assumed that her husband held the strongest of this type of opinion. No one knew Lacey Darling Wolff better than Andrew Wolff, for he clearly spent the most time getting to know her. Besides her own mother – a remarkable woman, Louis learned during his last festive dinner at the Wolff residence – just like all forgiving mothers, every single person Lacey had and was bound to come across, with the exception of those with similar minds, were undoubtedly bothered by her shortness whether they'd like to admit it or not. For Mister Harry to claim she wasn't at all a bother for any reason was for him to lie directly to her face even if she was too abandoned in intelligence to realise. Because Louis respected her so, she needn't realise Mister Harry's inconsideration, for he recognised it on her behalf and wouldn't allow any man view her as just a pretty lady in heels.

Out in his back garden, whilst the day was just approaching 2:00, Louis rested in the tired sun, smoking a cigarette and having a drink. He found the grasshoppers keenly interesting for a long time – long enough for the sleepy sun to move in the sky – and then heard creeping, heavy metal trickling into the public from the house to the left. Louis didn't know the song, but he knew it. Inside, he knew it.

Years ago, Louis' house was not his house. His home, the street, the entire estate, was only an idea. Once, Louis never thought he'd make it so far in life as to have his own house, his own money to purchase his own house, his own job to pay the mortgage on his own house, his own car, his wellbeing and everything to come with comfortable living. Years ago, Louis didn't think he would live as long as twenty–six years. Before it all, Louis Tomlinson wasn't a name to be associated with a face. His face didn't exist at one time. In a world of science and studies, a planet sustaining intelligence to help its people reach other worlds like the moon and Mars, we hadn't discovered a Louis Tomlinson. The home Louis knew once wasn't a costly house built right in between two real homes, nor a planet called Earth. Once, years ago, the home Louis Tomlinson knew was his family.

He came running from the snow, tracking water and tiny flecks of dirt onto his mother's new carpeting, swinging his scarf in circles as he chased his sisters inside. He shut the door, the December wind blowing it wide open again, and went on his way through the living room, the the kitchen, but not before slipping on his own sock; a red one with a hole in it.

"Lottie!" Louis called, following his screaming sisters round the kitchen island. "Get back here!" He'd picked up a pair of tongs and started snipping at the air.

"Louis!" His mother came through the already open door with her two 2–year–old daughters, Daisy and Phoebe. "I've told you so many times, don't leave the door open. And stop running unless you like getting no Christmas gifts."

"I'm not running," the boy said, clever and mischievous. He hid the tongs behind his back. "Where did Lottie and Fizzy go?"

"No place that concerns kitchenware."

"So the toilet?"

"Lou––"

Before his mother finished, he was off up the stairs in his winter boots, wasting snow all over the steps. He peeked through each room along the corridor, quietly calling his sisters' names, and when he heard movement from the back room, he barged in.

His mother's husband, and four sisters' father, was getting undressed, just unwinding from work.

His name was Evan. Mum called him Junior (as he was named after Evan Tomlinson Senior) and sometimes, occasionally, Bigmouth. He was an architect – had gone to university for it and studied religiously in college. Never had he gone on a holiday nor taken a personal day off in all the years Louis knew him, which hadn't began when he was born. Louis' father, Troy Austin, walked out on him when he was a baby, though young Louis liked to pretend that he never existed; he enjoyed the concept (the simple fantasy) of having a man in his life who loved him. He wanted someone who spoke to him like it wasn't a chore – a mere exercise to cross off the "To–Do List" – and initiate adult–like, stimulating conversations regardless of age. He wanted someone to make him laugh when he was hurting, to urgently pick him up and gently let him down, to sincerely wonder how and what he was doing. He wanted a man to be proud of him, disappointed in him, interested in him always. He wanted a beautiful, life–changing relationship with his father that he never truly had. For a very long while, Evan was that man.

Louis jumped when he saw Evan nearly naked. "Shit!" he stammered, attempting to throw himself back out the door. “Sorry, Dad!”

"Wait, come here." Evan stepped into his joggers, quickly beckoning Louis to stay.

So he stayed. "Yeah?" inquired the boy.

"It's getting a bit late in the month, innit?"

"I dunno, I guess."

"Yeah." The man rubbed his bare stomach. "Ya know, it's always slow this time of year, especially now with Christmas, everyone spending a whole bunch of money here and there. Same for us sometimes. We always do try our best to make you lot happy..."

Louis took a few steps closer to see if his father was really as upset as he seemed.

"That's why it's so hard to tell you this. Your mum wanted to wait until after Christmas to get your birthday present. Once everything gets reduced and that."

The boy's young, tiny heart slightly broke, his chin dropping to the thick coat layers on his chest. "Yeah," he sighed, eyes fixed wholly on the floor. "I mean, I understand. My birthday's on Christmas Eve. Entirely impossible."

"Don't get upset now, Lou. Your mum just thought it best to wait until we gathered the money. To be honest, I sorta saw it coming." With Louis still moping and frowning at the floor, Evan knelt beside his bed to stick his hand under, coming back with a white box. At the sight, Louis' face was priceless. "Which is why," Evan went on, seating himself on the mattress, "I got your present early."

The boy clasped his hands over his face as he beamed. “You didn't! Holy shit!” He hopped onto the bed and snagged his gift. "I can open it now?"

"Course you can, love." Evan wore the funniest expression. "Unless you'd like to wait till tomorrow."

"Right." Louis ripped off the wrappings in a single move, fumbling for a seal on the small cardboard box. "You really had me going there," he shamed his dad. "I thought I wasn't getting anything, but... Wait. It's a trick, innit?"

"A trick?"

"Yeah, like what happened to your bother Charlie. You lot gave him a bloody Nintendo 64 box with no Nintendo inside. Just an ugly, shit pair of trainers."

Evan bowed his head and covered his face to obscure his immature laughter, though it didn't work, and apologised for ever doing such a thing. "No, it's not like that," he claimed. "I would never do that to you. Just open it, love."

Once the grand assurance, Louis broke the seal of the box, finding yet another box inside of that box. Although the box was significantly smaller than the first, he worried for his emotions once more. "It's a fucking watch," he told himself, looking at his father with a big, blue gaze. "Is it a watch, Dad?"

"Perhaps. If you stop swearing."

With that, Louis opened his gift, splintering hope met by a glorious, glistening gold watch. A timepiece for a soon–to–be 12–year–old boy. It was well–afforded. In just two days and 21 hours before his birthday, Louis was then discovered as not a name to a face, but a name to an illness.

The boy's room was crawling with sweat, the wardrobe, the fish tank, each shoelace thread he owned, all melting under the cold, pitch room and feeling his agony to the last drop. He tossed in his bed, clammy hands pressed desperately upon his neck where spurts of pain gnawed at him over and over again.

"Mum!" Louis cried, tears swallowing him in his sleep. "Mummy!"

Footsteps echoing down the corridor came panicked and fast approaching, and in no time his door was hitting the wall, the light was coming on, and she was at her son's side pulling him up.

"What's wrong, my love? What is it?" she said in the most soothing voice.

"My neck!" Louis lazily thrashed in his mother's arms, his dad coming in a few moments later. "It hurts!"

"Your neck?" Evan sounded confused. "Perhaps it's just an ache. Maybe you should rub it."

His wife flailed her hands. "Junior!"

“What do you want me to do, Jay?”

"No, don't touch it!" Louis cried. I'm scared! Please, don't touch it."

"Okay, poppet, I won't." His mum took his chin. "Just let me see."

"No!"

"Sweetheart, I can't help you if I don't know what's wrong."

"I don't want your fucking help! Just take me to hospital!"

"I won't touch it, I promise you. Just let me see. Let me help you, love."

Louis was reluctant to remove his hand. He was fearful of a problem that he'd anticipated, deciding that actually finding out that something might be seriously wrong being the worst of it, though he already knew. Regardless of his worry, the underlying flesh below the right side of his jaw got stabbed with a fork it seemed, causing him to wonder where the blood had gone. If Louis was hurt at least half as much as his mind was telling him, that a big, metallic thing had punctured his neck in his sleep, for the pain and physical weight was there, then he would have been okay. Because he could see with his eyes what the problem was. But his problem all lie beneath his skin.

"Missus Tomlinson," Doctor Lennon said, carding his fingers together after sipping his coffee. "Louis."

Glancing over at his mother, Louis could see she wanted to correct him.  _Call me Jay_ , she'd insist as she did usually. But she was too nervous and cold in that hospital to do so.

"The checkup went well,” Doctor Lennon finalised. "You look okay for the most part."

"Don't do that." The woman's hand was shaking as she held it up to shush him. "We aren't here to learn about 'the most part', are we? He woke up in the middle of the night screaming in pain, saying his neck hurts. Look at this." She grabbed her son's head to pivot him, and pointed directly to the mark written on his neck in marker pen. "Right here, the lymph node is inflamed. Is he ill?"

"Possibly, but not to worry. This is very common in colds, and it is December––"

"It's not a fucking cold! You're not listening!"

Both Louis and the doctor shrank in astonishment.

"This is my son you're speaking about! Are you just going sit here, patronise me and waste all of our time, or are you going to tell me what I'm paying you to tell me? I'm a nurse, I know this isn't something to be shrugged off as some fucking winter cold. So you must tell me right now,  _doctor_. What's wrong with my son?"

The man appeared awfully uncomfortable being confronted. To look into his eyes that were guilty looking into those of Louis' mother was to hold the tension in one's own hands. The awkwardness had a physical presence.

In an instant Doctor Lennon was giving Louis spare change and directions to the vending machine. The weight of the small amount of money nearly had Louis collapsing with how ultimately ailing he felt. He'd looked at his mother, then back at the doctor, and repeated a couple of times. But there was hardly any fight in him at that moment, so he took the money and went out into the hallway.

He found the vending machine. There were mainly crisps and sweets, some biscuits, but he didn't want any of it. He'd slipped the coins in one piece at a time, pressed the buttons for a Wispa, and then left it at the bottom when it hit. Louis stood there waiting without knowing what it was he waited for. It must have been on the conversation between his mother and Doctor Lennon, or maybe an appetite so he could eventually grab his Wispa. No matter the reason he stood round the vending machine, looking at his colourful reflection in the glass, the signal to stop waiting never came.

It had been over twenty minutes until Johanna came to collect her son.

She approached him slowly, carefully, as though he was too fragile to touch. “Louis?” she said, her voice puny. “Time to head back, love.”

Louis didn't say anything, and he didn't move.

“You really need to get some sleep. Come home with me.”

“I don't want to.”

“...Why not?”

“Because I'm ill. I don't want my sisters to catch it.”

Johannah immediately brought her hands to her face to try into them, getting her boy's attention very easily. She held her arms wide open, begging Louis to come to her, and he did. She snatched him and held him close, sure to mind his neck. “Nobody is getting ill, sweetheart,” she assured him.

“Except me.”

She cried a bit more. “I love you, Louis. You're going to beat this, I know you are. There is absolutely nothing in this world you can't do.”

“But...”

His mother powerfully pulled him away, positioning him still as she got down on her knees. “You listen to me,” Johannah demanded, holding his hands in her own. “You can do _anything_. There is nothing that can hold you back, Louis, _nothing_. You're stronger than you may ever know, but I want you to know now. You can do this... So don't be scared, love.”

Later in the day, all the way into the early night, Louis listened to his parents argue, and his baby sisters cry, and his hamster scurry in the shredded bits inside his cage. He heard things that annoyed him, things he wasn't meant to hear. His mother was in hysterics by the time they returned home and resorted to agonised behaviour by the time she entered her bedroom, finding her husband already prepared to discuss how to proceed with the news she had addressed over the phone. She'd shout at him, throw shoes when he called her “dramatic”, thus resulting in the argument that Louis was not meant to hear: “Stage IV Medullary Thyroid Cancer” and “50 percent chance survival rate”.

And during the night, Louis was jealous. As far as he knew and was concerned, his mother was accompanied, though aggravated, by Evan, and Charlotte and Félicité always shared a room, and the same for the two babies; never mind their midnight fits because at least they cried together. Louis cried to his wall that didn't care for him. And when he'd become sick of that, he'd grab his little hamster and hide it in his duvet. He'd stared out the window, sat back in his bed with his hamster frantically searching for a way back to the cage, whilst the neighbours played heavy metal.

The man arrived back at the Wolff residence intoxicated. He let himself in.

“Hello!” Louis said, creeping inside with a cigarette. “I need to have a chat wi' ya! It's important! About your daughter!”

“What about me?”

He turned to see Cam in her pajama top and no bottoms. “Where's your parents? Your da's here, ain't he? I seen his car.”

Her response was delayed. The small girl twisted up her face and took a short step backward. “You're drunk,” she decided. “What do you want?”

“S'a bit rude.”

“It isn't. Dad says you don't owe drunks a thing.”

“Good thing I ain't one. An your da tells you stuff you're better off not knowin' at your age.”

“He says knowledge is power. He says he's smart.”

“He's your dad. He's quite obligated to tell you that, ain't he?”

Cam's spirit seemed to somehow be confused, or even disheartened. Nevertheless, she was alarmed by his choice of words describing that very important man in her life, whether she was aware of its insulting nature or not. But something within Louis' full–on–alcohol belly told him that she knew exactly what he meant.

“Look, I'm here to chat to your parents, Darling,” he said again, drawing from his cigarette. “They're here, I know they are.”

Just on cue, Andy was coming downstairs still dressed from work, as was Lacy in her yellow outfit, except she'd put gloves on.

As the two approached the living room, Kaylee beginning to bark from the front garden, Cam rubbed her eyes rid of sleep as though to disguise the fact that it was well–past her bedtime. The first things on her parents' agenda, unfortunately, was to let the dog in and send the child to bed.

“What's up?” Andy asked his neighbour, letting Kaylee through the door.

Louis considered taking the lot of them outside to discuss what was on his mind, but Lacey was shoving an ashtray in his face before he could think twice. He questioned her authority, a brave notion he would never carry out sober, but put his cigarette out almost immediately anyway.

“Cam's teacher had a chat wi' me,” Louis started. “After the lesson.”

Andy frowned. “What about?”

“I didn't tell her everythin'. I just... Cam's been gettin' tired in class. It's bad. To the point where... she's got to take a rest.”

“She's been sleeping in class?”

“No, no, she's just getting fatigued is all. Which is weird, ya know, 'cause they just stand there an sing most days. And her teacher tells all the kids to stay hydrated, yeah, an I reckon you know Cam's been drinkin' more than a bit a water lately––”

“Yeah, I know. She's pissed the bed the other night, for fucks' sake.”

“Yeah, an has been going to the toilet at least five times each lesson. Her other teacher – Harry, I think his name is, the fucking prick. He's decided she goes too much and only lets her piss once in the hour. She came to me in tears after 'cause she couldn't hold it. Looked like she was gonna wet herself right bloody there... Anyway, Tara's worried about her. She wanted to know what's wrong so they can properly accommodate to her needs.”

“And?”

Once examining the top of the stairs in case Cam was eavesdropping, he leaned in so he could whisper. “I only told her about the diabetes.”

“Good,” Lacey said loudly. “I don't want her knowing. Not anyone.”

“Right.” Andy always agreed with his wife. “Best not tell her anything else, mate. They don't need to know shit like that.”

“I didn't  _want_  to tell her. She's genuinely concerned––”

“Why not just ring me next time? Have me chat with her?”

“That ain't the point I'm tryna to make.”

“No, the thing is we're her parents and it's our business to tell the people we think are okay to tell. You don't get to make that decision.”

Louis' fists bunched at his sides. “Again, not the point. It's not about who knows.”

“Of fucking course, it is. The wrong bloody person finds out, suddenly everyone knows and Cam's coming to us at the end of the day asking why the fuck she's had to hear about her condition from someone else.”

“No one'll find out.” Louis glanced at the stairs again. “I swear, I'll ring Tara first thing tomorrow if that's the issue there. But what I'm getting at is... You know the main thing's that...” He couldn't find the words anymore. “Fuck.”

“Maybe you should go, Lou,” Andy said kindly, placing his hand on the younger man's shoulder. “Get some sleep. Get off the leg.”

“No.”

“Louis, mate––”

“No, wait just a fuckin' minute! You wanna transfer that concern a yours to your kid?”

Andy put on a warning glare.

“You act like all bloody Hell's gonna break loose if she finds out from someone else, but it ain't like she'd hear it from anyone better! As long as no one laughs, it's okay to know a secret, yeah? So what? She's gonna laugh at her own fucking secret, is she? That's why you're keepin' it from her? It does no good to her, so just let her in on it, for fucks' sake!”

By the immediate expression wearing Lacey's face, Louis knew he'd found the wrong words. He was a deer in headlights, his lips agape and everything.

Now, heartbroken and angry, the man of the house offered no room for mercy as he stepped right into Louis' face, taking the boy by his shirt. “You shit-faced?' Andy growled.

Louis nodded.

“Good. Otherwise, I'd have to fuck you like a pig.”

He couldn't bring himself to respond. Not to that.

“Apologise to my wife.”

As Louis acknowledged the woman behind Andrew, still standing there wearing that otherworldly expression, his eyes could only divert past the both of them to discover Cam sat at the top of the staircase. She was holding her attentive little head in her hands, staring for God knew how long. And with his eyes, the other adults' followed.

Andy quickly removed his grasp on Louis and gathered himself. “What are you doing up, love?” he asked his daughter. “It's late, you've school tomorrow.”

Only she didn't answer his question. Instead, she'd asked her own. “Can Kaylee sleep with me tonight?”

“No. You know she's not allowed.”

After getting her answer, she went back to her bedroom, closed the door, and that was that. But the house wasn't quiet for much longer.

“Louis, get the fuck out,” Andy said, gesturing to the backdoor. “You can stop coming by. We'll manage without you.”

Louis' jaw fell open. “I...” And he lost his breath very swiftly. “You can't be serious. Lacey?”

The woman was still in shock after what had been spoken, unable to hear anything else.

“I didn't mean what I said, I just... I'm sorry, it just slipped out. You know I don't think that way a you. It's just hard for me.”

“Oh, is it? Is it hard for you?”

“Mate, you know I didn't mean it like that.”

“You've fucked it, now fuck off.”

He made it home fine. After all, he only lived a twenty-second walk away. Though the journey was short and easy, he'd slammed his door shut and marched directly up to his bedroom where he stripped down to his pants, throwing his clothes across the room into his cupboard. He heard his cellphone hit the wall as he did so, but was not feeling inclined to check on the screen nor the drywall. Rather than worry about stupid tangible things, he figured he could throw other things out the window.

“Turn the music fuckin' down, you shitting retard!” he shouted at his his teenage neighbour's house.

His neighbour revealed himself soon enough through his own window. “Shut up!”

“We're tryna get some sleep, mate! Turn it the fuck off!”

“Gotta be every year, don't it? Go get a fucking life, you prick!”

Louis could have said something to that – he'd kept a mass of insults for this lad especially locked put away for good use – but he gave him a look at his middle finger instead and pulled his window shut.

Pacing back and forth in his dark, idle room, he contemplated going next door to destroy the boy's stereo – perhaps beat it with a mallet. He wanted to do it, but it was more than obvious that he could and should not. Never mind that the parents would sue him; the press was not kind to public figures who showed the smallest bit of human emotion. Louis also contemplated sneaking back into the Wolff's house to see Cam for the last time if he really was forbidden from seeing her. However, that idea was just as awful as the last, if not worse. Yet he still went over what he might say to her. If he could tell Cameron Wolff anything in the world, he would say what could get him beaten to a pulp. He would tell her as confidently as he could: “Your diabetes have properly fucked with your body, so you've got kidney failure. But I love you and you can do anything. Don't be scared.” But he couldn't speak of such things, though he did often pray that he could because he knew what it was like. He knew of the struggles of physical weakness, the constant confusion, the way that nobody could tell him what he needed to hear, even if it concerned him more than anyone. He knew how it felt to know, regardless of the science, the hows and whys, that one's body could easily give up on them. He understood very clearly the emotional pain being on the verge of death, and the helplessness that feeds on ill flesh.

 


	5. limbo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> everyone ages and everyone dies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chocolate dna head unapologetic foot stepper is in this one woooooooo

Beneath the coolness of the afternoon, Louis' garden was looking parched. He stood outside among the insects and gasping wind, feeling a lot like those flowers growing in the ground. Of course they were pretty – though Louis wouldn’t describe himself that way – but were also small and nearly shriveling. The observation he made that the flowers were shriveling didn't translate in his mind that they were on the outskirts of decomposition alike himself. He simply thought they were radiant, yet dry, and might have needed some tending to.

So he did this. Louis didn't necessarily have a green thumb (or really like dirt, bugs or nature), but that was all he could think to do in the afternoon. He'd been using his last few days to sit round his house, drink, smoke cigarettes, sleep, and take medication for his leg aches. Cam was going to school again – he could see her come back after 3:00 wearing her rucksack and uniform. The previous day, Louis almost opened up his front door to say hello to her and ask how that bully in class was treating her, but he stayed inside and only thought about it. Andy kept stern about him seeing Cam and Lacey. The two men would sometimes come across each other outside, whereas Andy would ignore anything Louis had to say, even an apology. If ever Lacey went outside whilst Louis did, she’d rush back from where she came and either wait for Louis to leave or her husband or child to escort her.

As the water trickled down onto his share of the earth, Louis looked round the street. His teenage neighbour was skateboarding with a couple of other lads. He felt bad for shouting at him several nights ago, but he kept that to himself. When they locked eyes once or twice, it was Louis who turned away first.

His fingers running over his head, he decided he needed a haircut. Being a well-known football player, one would think he spent his money on regular trims at the barbershop, but they would be wrong. When Louis felt up to it, he shaved his head himself, as he didn’t enjoy relying on other people much.

“Louis?”

He looked over to find Lacey at the pavement. “Oh.” He was suddenly more absent than he had been, throwing his watering pot into the bushes. “Hey, Missus Wolff. All right?”

“Great,” she said, smiling to prove herself. “There’s something I wanted to ask you, though. I’m just not supposed to be speaking to you, am I? Andy really hates that.”

“Does he?”

“Yes… He’s upset with you.”

“I know. Again, I’m really sorry for what I said about Cam. It’s none of my business, I shouldn’t have told you that. It was stupid and disrespectful.”

“I forgive you!” Lacey reacted with hyperactivity and with her ponytail swinging behind her. “I’m just not supposed to be chatting to you. But Andy can’t see what I do when he’s not here, can he?”

Louis smiled and nodded. “Right.”

“But there’s something I want to ask you. Cam has been doing so well in school these days. Hasn’t punched anyone since her suspension, so we’re having her birthday party tonight. You’re invited especially.” The lady pulled a classy little invitation with his name on it from behind her back, offering it with both hands like her husband did with his handshakes.

With immediate shame, he lowered his head and sighed. “I want to,” he admitted, watching the card with longing, “but I don’t think I should...”

“Cam won’t have anyone to chat to. Only me and the teacher, but he’ll just be there for a while.”

As though by the snap of a finger, his head shot right back up. “The teacher?”

“Oh, he is lovely, Louis, just wonderful. You would be very _fond_ of him, as you say.”

“‘Fond’?” The way she spoke had him rather confused, especially in that dim September weather. “Who is he?”

“He’s called Harry... Styles, I think. I love it because he does dress beautifully and has got _beautiful_ hair. If only you’d seen him--”

“Yeah, I’ve seen him.”

“Then you must know! You’re fond of him, yeah?”

Louis sneered and rolled his eyes at her by accident, going to retrieve his watering pot from the bush. “You can’t be fond of someone you know nothing about,” he grumbled as he bent over as best he could on his casted leg. “I’ve never met him. Not that I’d really want to.”

“Why?” Her voice was stunned.

It meant a bit to him, the answer. _He stepped on me_ , Louis thought, but not aloud. He couldn’t say that. He’d sound like a kid. Naturally, instead, he told the woman that he was uncomfortable with meeting Cam’s teacher whilst in his grimy state. So, also naturally, Lacey suggested that he get his hair cut, shave his face, dress nicely, and leave the fags at home if he chose to attend the party. Everything about the climate of that English September as well as that of his intellect was so organic, so as naturally as anything else, Louis agreed to do these things and later meet Cam’s lovely, fashionable “Mister Harry”.

First, Louis went to the barbershop. He asked for a standard buzzcut, but not too short because he didn’t want to look older than he was. After starting to feel more himself, he went shopping for Cam’s birthday gift. Her birthdate was still in two-days time, and he didn’t plan on buying her anything anyway, for there was really no way he could get it to her (unless he rang her emergency phone or slipped her a gift through the post, but both resources were monitored by her parents). During his stroll round the shops, he was approached by a couple of football fans asking for signatures and photographs, and some inquired about how he was doing on his bad leg, to which he replied bluntly yet truthfully: “Fine.” Louis took care of his second priority directly after the purchase of Cam’s present. He went looking for a nice shirt and shoes. Now, he didn’t know what sort of thing Harry wore on or off the job, but he could explicitly see that he decorated for occasion, even if there wasn’t one, and since this was a birthday party he was getting ready for, he decided to overstep his comfort zone.

Louis was unsure of which shop to look through. He was limited on time, as the gathering would begin in two hours or so, and he knew not of what to wear. He saw it already: Lacey would be adorned in a repellent pink outfit with long, pale gloves on her arms and a frangible neckpiece Andy got her for Christmas three years ago. Cam would have on one of her nicer shirts if not one of the handmade ones from her mother. Her hair would be properly sorted, earrings on, trousers fitted with a belt, looking like a tiny man. And Harry, lastly, would steal the show. He’d be wearing a polka-dotted button-down, or something, a slimming pair of dress trousers, his oh, so wonderful Saint Laurent shoes with his chocolate DNA curls looking extra curly and extra chocolatey especially. How that lad would manage to get his hair even more kinky than it already was, Louis didn’t know. He also didn’t know if Harry was even the type to dress up for children's parties. If perhaps he wasn’t, then Louis was shopping in the wrong place, as he assuredly wanted to show him up. Maybe Harry was a man who only dressed nicely whilst in a pretty lady’s presence; Tara was pretty, and so was Lacey. But they were both married. The only other reasonable possibility that could cause Harry’s dwindled magnificence at Cam’s birthday was that, possibly, it was laundry day. But still, Louis wanted to give everyone something to look at in jealousy. He’d never felt right about that notion before, but in this context it was vital.

So Louis bought a shirt and shoes and went home to get ready. It only took him a total of fifty minutes, leaving him no time to do anything else - not even clean up the water he’d spilt in the kitchen. The main cause of this was his leg and trying to find bottoms that didn’t look rubbish with a boot on. Needless to say, he could only wear jeans. Anything else made him want to set it on fire.

Finally on Louis’ list, what he dreaded most, was what he _shouldn’t_ do. Lacey had asked him to keep his cigarettes at home, and with that in mind, he smoked on his way to the venue, unfortunately tarnishing the heavenly scent of his cologne.

The day was murky by the time he made his appearance after seven with Cameron Darling’s birthday gift. He saw many people coming in and out of the building from where he’d parked his car, and a couple of service dogs. Louis looked at his invitation to ascertain he was at the right place, though there was no mistake about it. It was considerably grander than he’d expected, flashing lights going off inside and two bouncers by the front entrance. Louis had only ever seen bouncers on TV and exclusive celebrity affairs.

The men by the door were so ginormous, Louis felt like a fourteen-year-old in front of them. But they allowed him in, seeing his official invitation and finding his name on their VIP list.

The energy was worse than the vibrating pulse outside. Upon walking in, a group of winged children flew past on their way to a large bouncy castle made to look like a crocodile. They’d run into its mouth and disappear in there. That happened on Louis’ left, and on his right, kids queued up to get their pictures taken at a photo stand-in of Peter Pan and TinkerBell. He strongly doubted that this was the correct party, but realising Tchaikovsky’s presence from the speakers, that idea was erased automatically.

“Fuck,” Louis groaned.

Face in a scowl, Louis wandered his way to the toilets at the back on the building. The men's toilets were labelled with “Lost Boys” and the women's with “Lost Girls”, the all-gender toilets labelled “Fairies”. Although cute, they were not the best choices for toilet signs.

Quickly, he went into the men's and locked himself in one of the stalls and, practically on command, bunched up his fists, his body boiling up inside. He needed to think. Lacey never informed him of a theme, let alone a theme as extravagant as _Peter Pan_. She also never told him that it was this type of party; a party meant for a woman before signing away her freedom via a marriage certificate, but given to a 6-year-old instead. And then Louis remembered that Cam was nearly seven. That fact slapped him in the face. It horribly beat him. He let the image of L.J. Rich's letter stain the stall door as he let himself glare at it. His fingers became so tight and his stomach so nauseous he could have either broken the door down or thrown up and both would make perfect sense to him. But he ignored those feelings and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, holding one between his lips as he shuffled through his clothes for a lighter, but was out of luck.

“Shit!” Louis kicked the door with his good leg. “For fuck’s sake!”

“You shouldn't swear.”

He stood from his position on the toilet, checking his pockets once more. “Yeah?” he questioned the stranger. “Why's that?”

“There's kids here.”

“Oh, right. I didn't know.”

“It's okay.”

Louis opened the stall once accepting his disappointment, ready to announce his arrival to Lacey like he’d meant to, but found himself staring across the toilet at a man standing at the last sink to the right. He was fixing his hair in the mirror – tousling his curls into distress by the look of it. He gave Louis deja vu, the way he did that, yet as Louis approached a sink as well, peering at the man from the corner of his eye, he spotted a spiral, like DNA, that fell under left ear.

In this moment, he suddenly knew that Harry Styles was real. Louis didn't make him up or experience psychosis when Cam and Lacey talked about him. He had real curly hair with a real chocolate brown colour, even if tinted under the blue lights. Harry was, in fact, noticeably taller than Louis, especially in the two-inch boots he wore which were not the Saint Laurents he'd had on before. These were black, shiny, possibly new, and went well with his (and Louis guessed this) black, very slimming trousers. Tighter than Louis had ever seen on a man; it would have made Harry look a woman had he not kept such a masculine upper body. A sheer dress shirt with a ribbon on the neck covered his chest and a red coattail blazer covered the rest of him.

After a while, the man caught Louis staring, and he stared right back. “You shouldn't smoke either.”

“Oh, no?” Louis said sharply, setting down his gift and running the tap. “It's not lit, is it?”

“What if one of the children sees you?”

“And what?”

“Thinks it's okay.”

“Well, _I_ think you should mind your own fucking business.”

The man didn't respond to that. He ignored Louis like he wasn't there at all; as though he never was.

Louis finished washing his hands and threw his cigarette in the bin. “Sorry, do you ever look where you’re going?”

“Do I what?”

“Look where you’re going.”

“No.”

He waited for a further explanation, but there wasn't one. So Louis snatched his neighbour’s present and walked out of the toilet and into the party, searching the perimeter a couple of times before stumbling upon Lacey.

“Louis!” she shouted louder than necessary. “Are you having fun? Have you seen Cam?”

“Well, I’ve just got here.”

“Oh. Have some cake then! I’ve saved a piece special for you!”

“Thanks very much. Maybe later.” He took in her costume choice: a simple blue dress imitating her usual 1950s passion and a matching bow in her hair. “I didn’t know it was themed, the party. It didn’t say on the invitation or anything.”

The smile on her pink lips faltered, then completely vanished. “It didn’t say?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I forgot to put it on?!” She threw her hands onto her hips and stamped her foot to the floor. “Cow patties. Well, it’s _Peter Pan_.”

“Yeah,” Louis laughed.

“Cam is round here somewhere. Last time I saw her was at the ‘Pin the Feather on the Peter’.”

“The what?”

“Oh, and have you gotten your footie uniform yet?”

Louis didn’t know why she liked to ask this question. Regardless, he thought it time to give her the answer she’d been looking for.

After conversing for a few more minutes, Lacey took his gift for her daughter to place with the others on a big table piled high with God-knows-what, letting Louis dawdle round the venue with his boot, sporadically blocking other guests and their kids. The multicoloured lights hanging from the ceiling disrupted his flow of thought as he moved toward a long array of food platters; fruit, pizza, sweets, fish and chips, crisps, hot dogs, sandwiches, burgers, quite a few separate cakes and pies, and miniature jars of a variety of layered custards. Even shifting his view over, there was a frozen yoghurt and a candy floss machine. Louis was overwhelmed looking at it all. _All this for a kid_ , he thought, _a dying kid_. Truly it was nothing short of a pity party. A going-away party. One where everyone said “bon voyage” in the form of “happy birthday” and it was nauseating. He could smell it with the specs of sugar and sweat floating in the air, so dense it could block his pores. None of it quite made sense. He understood that there was only so much time left, so many birthdays, if not this being the last, but did she want this? Louis couldn’t tell. He eyed a green cupcake with a feather jammed into the icing whilst an annoying twinge passed through him in from his toes and out his knee, reminding him of Cam’s fatal disease. If only she knew.

Louis took the cupcake and had a great, big bite off the side.

“When did you get here?”

“Fifeen minuss ago.” He faced his little neighbour in her mother’s handmade Victorian blouse wide open. “Uh!” Louis spat. “Put ya top on!”

“It’s on. And it doesn’t matter. I haven’t even got breasts yet.”

Louis then inhaled the cake and started to choke on it, nearly coughing up a lung before he could properly breathe again.

“Do you fancy the music anyway?” Cam wanted to know. “This is Miles Davis. I learned it in my choir lessons. This one’s called… _Blue in Green_.”

“Yeah, it’s nice. A bit slow, I reckon.”

“I know. Dad said we should make a different playlist for the party, but we did mine.”

“You know, I haven’t seen your dad at all. Is he here?”

“No. He’s a workaholic. He’ll be here in an hour.”

“Right.” Louis stuffed the rest of the cupcake in his mouth just to get rid of it. “Well, I’m ‘ere for ya till then. ‘Appy birfay, Darlin’.”

“Thanks,” she said smiling. “Wanna play limbo? They’re bringing out the stick soon.”

“Sorry, can’t do it with this thing on my leg.”

“So… we can get a picture at the face hole thing. There’s a Peter and TinkerBell one and a Peter and Hook one.”

“Whatever you want. As long as I’m not TinkerBell.”

Shouting at the adults to forgive her rudeness as she pushed past them, Louis following and giving more sincere apologies closely behind her, the two queued up at the Peter and Hook stand-in. Cam told him everything she’d done thus far at her extravaganza, including, but not limited to, jumping in the bouncy castle, pinning Peter’s feather to his eye rather than his hat, playing the air-sax, chatting to her dad on the phone, and eating all the sweets that could fit in her stomach. Although Louis wasn’t very good himself at policing Cam’s sugar intake, he was positive that this exposure to the abundance of confectionery was not good for her health, let alone anyone’s. He wanted to scorn her, or maybe even her parents, again, but it just wasn’t his place anymore. He needed to realise that. He also needed to realise that she could wear her shirt open at her own party if she wanted to.

“You be Hook,” Cam said, pushing Louis to the left end of the stand-in. “Get in there.”

“I am. Don’t boss me.”

“We need someone to take the picture. Have you got your phone?”

“Yeah, hang on. It’s in my--”

“I can take it for you.”

Louis’ head shot up, forgetting all about his pockets and how to not accidentally reveal his cigarettes, and regarded Harry’s existence, watching him pull his own mobile out and everything. Louis promptly fixed that typical offended look onto his face.

“Thank you, Mister Harry.” Cam joined Louis behind the stand-in, tugging him down so they could speak privately. “Smile, yeah?” she asked her neighbour. “You hardly ever do.”

“Quiet. _You_ hardly ever do.”

“I do! I’m obligated.”

“You’re what? How do you know that word?”

“You said it. Now get in.”

Governed by her control and total preciousness, Louis put his face through Hook’s pirate body, and just like that, the idea of smiling in that moment slipped his mind completely.

“Big smile, Cam,” Harry said, simultaneously adjusting his phone and hair. “And…”

The other man could certainly tell what he wanted to ask. “Louis.”

“Lovely name. Smile, too, yeah?”

Louis wanted to hurl a load of insults at him. It was one thing to not recall ever stepping on his foot and being too much in a rush to look back, but it was a whole other story to disregard the fact that Louis obviously did not like him. The compliments were irrelevant between them. There was no sense trying in making him remember that he’d defensively sworn at him without literally reminding him of the encounter, let alone why Louis felt the need to swear at him in the first place, but all he could really do was glare at the phone lens that was covering his face as it flashed.

Harry looked down at his photo when he finished, confused. “Um… You didn’t--”

“Can I take a picture of you, Mister Harry?” Cam interrupted, jumping down off the hidden stool and briskly approaching her teacher.

“Do you mean ‘with’?” Louis asked.

“No. I want one of him.”

Harry grinned and handed her his cell phone. “Of course, Cam.”

“Right, so stand there. Louis, have you still got that feather? The one from your cupcake?”

“Yes…”

She beckoned her friend over and instantly shoved her hands in his pockets, fortunately finding the feather and, unfortunately, his pack of menthols, which Louis had nothing to say about. Cam picked up an unattended green hat off a partly empty table and fixed it with the feather. After several failed attempts, she managed to position it nicely on Louis’ head. “It’s the eyebrows,” the angel informed him, stepping back with the cellphone. “Get close.”

Louis and Harry glanced at each other, though they said nothing. After a short time of silence and stillness, Harry scooted in beside him.

“Give us a smile, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Louis grumbled.

“Or I’ll bust you.”

“Right, would you stop talking like th--”

“Smile.” Harry threw his arm round Louis’ shoulders, tucking him tight against his tough ribs and bright perfume, throwing a big, dimpled grin and two thumbs up. “Got it.”

The camera flashed before Louis could clean the utter disgust off his face.

“Oi, get off,” Louis commanded louder than he should have. He yanked his body out from under the man’s grasp, slightly pushing him away. “You’ve got no right to do that, to just bloody grab people.”

“Sorry…” The worry on Harry’s face seemed nothing less than a facade. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, you haven’t hurt me!” He flung his hat along the floor, several pairs of eyes darting over to see what the commotion was. “Jesus Christ. Come on, Cam, we’re doing limbo.”

Excited, the little girl hurriedly returned the cell phone to Harry, asking him to save the photos until she’d learn how to retrieve them, and followed Louis with his cross face on toward the queue forming for limbo.

Except he still did not want to play. He let Cam go off with the other kids, watching her closely in case Lacey had disappeared somewhere, but his eyes could only stay trained on one person for so long. His thoughts began to wander after a couple of minutes, and he might have had the slow ballad on the stereo to thank for this, as he saw himself in this scenario. He saw himself in Cam, with her utter gaiety and optimism for everything even if she needn’t always show it. Louis believed they were the same in that way. Through Louis’ eyes that were then looking up at the ceiling in all its colourful complexity, he remembered his own childhood - his own birthday parties. Certainly his twelfth birthday wasn’t as nice as he’d have liked it, for reasons extending far past his illness, but he could recall some better ones. However, those didn’t seem to matter. In contrast to his twelfth and everything beyond that point, the better times remained so tucked into the back of his brain, almost like they did not exist. And whilst basking in this cognition, it was no shock to him that his skin grew hot and his hands bunched up, as they often did when he contemplated too much.

And he thought about Cam’s teacher - that damned Harry Styles. Louis didn’t care that the man fancied his name or was polite to all Cam, her mother, and the dog. He didn’t mind that he didn’t need to care either. That man mocked something important to him - albeit something he hated - whether he knew it or not. The letter from Doctor L.J. Rich on the Wolffs’ refrigerator carried Harry’s stupid, purple pen ink, and it would be there forever. Unless Louis decided to steal and burn it. But the thought would always last like all the rest. The memories of such horrid things never expired, did they? Louis was aware of that - he accepted it - yet rather than realise the possibility to leave the past behind him, he dwelled in it. He mooched off it like a poor beggar.

“Louis?” That was Lacey. “Guess what.”

He looked at her expectantly, as though nothing from her could ever take him off guard. “Yes?” Louis said.

“Cake.” Only then did he notice the small sliver of swirly chocolate cake in her hands. “The same one. It’s still here, just for you.”

Not long after, Andy had phoned his wife to inform her that he could not make the celebration; he’d been held up at work, and, as any mother would be, Lacey was too horrified to tell their daughter. She’d started fumbling with her hands, speaking all kinds of incoherent things to herself, as though it were her worst nightmare. Seeing this, Louis brought it upon himself to distract Cam for as long as possible, so he played limbo, pinned Peter’s feather on, did quite a few games of _Twister_ and lost each one, battled her in an eating competition, which he painfully won, and took her for a slow dance in the middle of the room.

 

Just then, with Clair de Lune swinging in time to his heartbeat, Louis saw the reasoning behind it all. The party. Looking at the crown of her head, her eyes locked on their feet, he really did see that Cam deserved nothing less than the whole world. If she had to take a lifetime of experience in the duration she had remaining, she’d take it by funnel, right down the throat. Like the sweets she was not allowed. But what was the point of keeping them from her exactly? She was dying anyway. In actuality, they all were. Everyone. And so Louis thought: _football_. _Where would I be without it? Dead._

 


End file.
